Untitled (C-58-17-1)

For 50 years Nobuyoshi Araki has pursued carnality and sexual decadence as manifestations of a liberated morality. This view of a group of swaggering young men, an iconic rendering of Japanese projections of countercultural virility, suggests such liberation even though its subjects are fully clothed. The image was printed from a negative processed in overheated developer and perhaps distressed in other ways as well. The “manhandling” of photographic products, typically understood as precious and fragile surfaces, conveys at a material level the combination of intimacy and disrespect with which Araki approaches his social environment.