The longer one studies Araki's work, however, the more obvious it becomes that this seeming chaos of themes and motifs conceals a structuring force of precise selection. Although coincidence may well play a part in his art, the majority of Araki's photos draw their strength from his astonishing powers of observation, which enable him to expose an unexpected facet in nearly every motif. Araki is constantly on the move, wandering through his native Tokyo in search the moments that provide him with new material for his investigations into the spheres of life that have permanently captured his fascination, into themes that he continually approaches anew: the city of Tokyo, sexuality and death. In making such a list, of course, one runs the risk of failing to do justice to the complexity of Araki's work, of placing it too near the realm of documentary photography. The Japanese photographer is hardly a documentarist, however, although it is true that every photograph with a recognizable theme is in its own way a document of its time. Essential to Araki's view of photography is the question of the extent to which a photo can serve as a metaphor for specific feelings, desires and moods and thus take form as a psychological statement, a penetrating, highly individual image. Many of Araki's photographs have such qualities, not because they violate supposed or genuine taboos but because they are non-mediated responses based upon subjective experience, upon an experience of the familiar In this respect, they share certain underlying affinities with the photographs of such contemporaries as Noritoshi Hirakawa, Sakiko Nomura, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Robert Frank and Larry Clark. Araki's work with the American artist Nan Goldin, which resulted in the book Tokyo Love (1994), shows that astounding parallels in the constitution of contemporary photographic images can emerge between two very different artist personalities.

On the other hand, certain aspects of Araki's work clearly reveal the specific character of his origins, althought this has little to do with what is generally subsumed within the concept of 'Japanese culture." Instead, it relates to the special system of metaphor that plays a major role in Araki's work. His publication entitled In Ruins, which appeared as the eleventh volume of The Works of Nobuyoshi Araki in 1996, contains a series of photographs centered primarily around the themes of beauty, growth and bloom but also concerned with decline and mortality in nature. An air of morbidity envelopes all of the animals, plants and dried fruits. A cat is shown lying in a cardboard box. Whether it is dead or alive is impossible to say. The skeleton of a reptile, a feather torn from the body of a bird, the core of a half-dried melon - each serves as a memento mori. We see abandoned, partially rusted garden furniture on a terrace surrounded by an invading horde gorillas, prehistoric animals and gigantic black flies - all made of rubber - a picture full of disturbing beauty and signs of impending doom at the same time. In Araki's art - and this applies to his photos on sexual subjects as well - the theme of death is a constant presence.

Araki explained his intimate conceptual concern with the idea of death in great detail in his conversation with Nan Goldin. Asked why he thinks that the smell of death is attached to photography, he answered: 'When you hold on to something that moves, that is a kind of death. The camera, the photographic image have always called forth the idea of death. And I think about death when I photograph, as you can see in the pictures. That may be an oriental, Buddhist concept. For me, taking a photo is an act in which my 'ego' is brought out by the object. Photography has always been associated with death. Reality is colorful, yet early photography always took the color out of reality and made it black-and-white. Color is life; black-and-white is death. There was a ghost hidden in the invention of photography.'

Araki's statement serves as a fitting motto for this publication. Under the title Tokyo - Shijyo, freely translated as Tokyo - Marketplace of Emotions, the book gathers together 100 color and 100 black-and-white photographs, each from a different series, in a single volume, arranged in a sequence of contrasting pairs. The fascinating, brilliant color of the 'Flower Series' stands in strange contrast to the dark mood of the black-and-white series, which Araki entitled "Death Reality."This part of Tokyo - Shijyo presents the remains of an old movie made by Araki with a simple camera in the 1970s. Stored improperly for many years, the film itself shows severe damage in some places. It is streaky and bears traces of smoke or soot, as if it had been subjected to violent treatment - a sign of mortality and death in Araki's eyes.

The Flower-Series is virtually bathed in opulent color. Unlike Araki's earlier photographs of this type, in which dead geckos served as moribund reminders, the callas, orchids and daisies in these photos unfoid their magnificence undisturbed. Their connotation as symbols of life derives in part from the fact that plant sexual organs have traditionally evoked anthropomorphic associations. Supported by a long tradition of Japanese painting, in which plants and shrubs have played a significant role in a number of different respects, Araki exploits the suggestive power of Cibachrome photography to create images with multiple meanings in a spectrum that encompasses expressions of pure beauty, erotic obsessions and metaphors of emptiness and death. Regardless of their specific themes, all of Araki's photographs can be approached within this context.