ABOUT

TO THE PAST focuses on his auto-dated photo diary black and white photographs, spanning monumentally from Araki’s adoption of the process in 1979, up until the day of the great Japanese earthquake in March, 2011. Ordered ‘chronologically,’ Araki’s masterful editing defines a clear narrative of passing time and life over 32 years. The edit, often with the sublime sitting next to the seemingly mundane gives further charge to all images both individually and as a whole, and each can be viewed as a link between moments previous and following. TO THE PAST, viewed alongside Araki’s many other books can be seen, paradoxically in light of its chronological fraudulence, as an exceedingly open and frank dialogue about universal truths—joy, and sadness, life and, ultimately, death. While an inherent honesty and nostalgia are hallmarks of much of Araki’s previous work, the level of reflection and openness on display in TO THE PAST can clearly be read as the tenderising influence of age, illness, and experience.