1,250 illustrations

On the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary in 2014, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain asked the prolific Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki to take a photograph every day to then publish weekly on its website in a slide show. Araki took more than three times that amount from March to May 2014, producing 1,250 color photographs featuring views of Tokyo, portraits of young women, sensual still lifes, and shots taken at restaurants or in a small bar in the district of Kabuki-cho. Nobuyoshi Araki, Hi-Nikki (Non-Diary Diary) is a chronicle of that rich digital project, inviting the reader to dive into the daily life of this prolific artist.

Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo in 1940 and invented the genre of the false photographic journal in 1980. His work is inspired by the history of his country, his daily life, and Japanese eroticism. Situated somewhere on the border between autobiography and the diary, his work features spontaneous pictures of the sky, cats, Tokyo neighborhoods alongside still lifes and portraits of young women in a variety of staged situations.