Nobuyoshi Araki Quotes

#1. A photographer cannot be inexperienced, or too mature. A photographer ought to be half-ripe.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#2. In the act of love, as in photography, there is a form of life and a kind of slow death,

Nobuyoshi Araki

#3. I would say my sex drive is weaker than most. However, my lens has a permanent erection.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#4. There is a camera is between a man and a woman.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#5. Only artists without talent try to shock people.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#6. What makes [photography] obscene is its terrible cruelty. Happiness may be fleeting, but it's the reason we go on living. Photography is the joy that precedes pain, the moment of life just before death.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#7. You are either born to be a photographer or not. The art of photography is not something you can learn in the classroom or by watching someone do it.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#8. Women? Well, they are gods. They will always fascinate me. As for rope, I always have it with me. Even when I forget my film, the rope is always in my bag. Since I can't tie their hearts up, I tie their bodies up instead.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#9. Photography is about a single point of a moment. It's like stopping time. As everything gets condensed in that forced instant. But if you keep creating these points, they form a line which reflects your life.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#10. Don't you think that it is necessary to have a sense of brutality in photography?

Nobuyoshi Araki

#11. Art is all about doing what you shouldn't.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#12. The camera itself, the photograph itself, calls up death.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#13. My photos are my diary. Every photo is no more than the representation of a single day. And each day contains the past and the projection into the future. That's why I feel compelled to indicate the date on every picture I take.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#14. 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.

Nobuyoshi Araki

#15. I only tie up woman's body because I know I cannot tie up her heart. Only her physical parts can be tied up. Tying up a woman becomes an embrace.

Nobuyoshi Araki