When hearing the words Japan and binding, we tend to think of either books or feet, the latter deformed by painful techniques that were officially banned a century ago. An act of self-mutilation or enforced cruelty to the eyes of many westerners, the whole Japanese bondage thing tends to have those of us from this side of the world wondering where to look – the schoolgirl-doll branch of the Japanese fetishism tree doesn’t hang well with other cultures either – but kinbaku-bi, literally “the beauty of tight binding”, is the disturbing landscape in which Japanese photography giant Nobuyushi Araki towers, fascinating and appalling in equal measures.
A retrospective of Araki’s kinbaku work in this controversial field is being presented by Michael Hoppen Contemporary in Chelsea, London. Araki claims to worship women as gods, using a real rope in a figurative act of capture that he could not achieve outside the realm of staged photography. His quest to reach what he considers the artistic heights of woodblock shunga images – early illicit pornography – does produce some powerful photographs, although let’s be honest, the women don’t seem to be enjoying their time in captivity much. I shouldn’t think a copy of the book Bondage, published by Taschen, is sitting on Germaine Greer’s coffee table either, but if you’ve got the stomach for it, you can experience Araki’s morally dubious work at the gallery until 8th June.
Kinbaku, 1980-2000/2013,
Fuji crystal archive print, 40×30”
From an edition of 10
Grand Diary of a Photo Maniac,
[Television screen], 1996
30×40”, silver gelatin print,
from an edition of 10
Kinbaku, 1980-2000/2013,
Fuji crystal archive print, 40×30”
From an edition of 10
Nobuyoshi Araki
Flower Rondeau, 1997
Fuji crystal archive print,
from an edition of 10,
size 30×40”
Kinbaku, 1980-2000/2013,
Fuji crystal archive print, 40×30”
From an edition of 10
All images © Nobuyoshi Araki
courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery /
Taka Ishii Gallery
