Nobuyoshi Araki - Tokyo Blues 1977 - 2013

Tokyo Blues 1977

Nobuyoshi Araki
Taka Ishii/2013/Japanese/193*233*5

Nobuyoshi Araki's Photobook “Tokyo Blues 1977”. This photobook was published to coincide with a solo exhibition held at Taka Ishii Gallery Photography/Film in 2013. The opening page features a reproduction of the exhibition flyer for Araki's “Tokyo Blues” show, affixed to a wall. The photographs included in this book were originally presented at a 1977 exhibition held at Nikon Salons in Ginza and Shinjuku. They apparently remained untouched in storage afterward, but these unearthed vintage prints were exhibited once more after 40 years. Described by the gallery as “a fictional documentary beginning with a woman from Kyushu whom Araki met at the time,” Araki felt a sense of ‘blues’ in the background and life of this woman who had come to Tokyo. He captured her and other women who seemed to have come to Tokyo for various reasons in a documentary format (a fiction). (These are separately compiled in the 1978 photobook “Dramatic Shots: ‘Actresses’”).