The Voice at 3 AM

Araki's work affects me more than the work of any photographer I've ever before encountered. His work, however sexually explicit, is never pornographic, yet I react to it with all of the shock, shame, and excitement that I haven't felt when encountering actual pornography since I was hacking my way into porn sites at 13. Why? How? What's the difference between Araki's shot of a naked woman and someone else's? I don't want to broaden this too far. I'm not trying to draw a line between pornography and art (a good friend of mine already has: it comes down to shoes). I've never before been convinced that the way a person views a subject can truly be conveyed through a photograph. But, there's a signature to Araki's work. He accomplishes something with it that I can't deny, so I went to an interview he gave for a little more information.

Araki explains that to be a first-rate photographer, one must photograph women because "all the attractions in life are implied in women. There are many essential elements: beauty, disgust, obscenity, purity ... much more than one finds in nature." It's difficult for me to believe that Araki can use a camera to show us these things. It's difficult because of my distrust of and dislike for photography, but I'm reconsidering it. I'm going to work with some Sontag and more Araki quotes and photos for next time, but I'll leave you with a story by Araki about the woman who changed him from a pervert to a genius:

"When I became an adult, a woman immediately meant her sex. I took photos of genitals at close range and described this position in Sur-sentimentalist Manifest which I wrote in 1970 when I started taking pictures of women. At that time, I thought I had to become an anarchist. So I called myself "Ararky". That was the beginning. I was then working for Dentsu, a Japanese ad firm. I met Yoko, who soon became my wife. Until then I took photographs of women as objects, through their genitals. As soon as I photographed Yoko, I began to capture the relationship between me and the woman in front of me. It was the first time I was taking a woman instead of an object."