"Over 4,000 pictures!" the press officer shouts with enthusiasm over the phone the day after the opening of the most comprehensive exhibition of 65-year-old Nobuyoshi Araki's photographs to date.
"Self.Life.Death" is currently showing at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, and spans Araki's entire career from his early days as a photographer working at the advertising agency Dentsu, when he was taking pictures of petchan (Pepsi bottles), to his most recent shots commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of the war. The exhibition also includes a display of almost 300 of his books, as well as a recent documentary made by U.S. filmmaker Travis Klose.
The sheer volume of images is stunning, but then for someone who is a self-proclaimed shakyojin, a photo lunatic, a play on Katsushika Hokusai's moniker of gakyojin or painting lunatic, this is hardly surprising.