"My very first photo book was one I made by pasting prints into a sketchbook. It was a handmade photo book that I started making while I was at Dentsu. There was an art supply store in Ginza called Gekkoso, and I became friends with the owner there, and we decided to make this sketchbook. It was B4 size, and I wrote down the date, the camera and lens I used to take the photos. For example, a Minolta SR. What I'm doing hasn't changed much since then."
—— Nobuyoshi Araki
Nobuyoshi Araki, known as Araki, is a photographer born in Tokyo in 1940. After graduating from the Department of Photographic and Printing Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chiba University, majoring in photography and film, he worked for Dentsu Inc. from 1963 to 1972. His debut work, Sachin (1964), won the first Taiyo Award.
A total of 26 scrapbooks containing photos taken by Araki as personal studies and layouts in his Gekkoso sketchbooks between 1964 and 1971, before he left Dentsu and went freelance, were suddenly discovered in a warehouse.
In terms of works, it would be before "Sentimental Journey."
This was the missing piece in unraveling the genius Araki's life, and the precious record of what Picasso called his "Blue Period" was titled "Moonlight Photography" and released as a photobook. It contains many of the motifs that would later color the genius's photographic career.
Gekkoso gently approached Araki's "origins," which had rarely been made public until now.
