Nobuyoshi Araki
[Photographer, b. 1940, Tokyo, lives in Tokyo.]

 ...the time when a picture is taken is like an emotion, it’s like a sexual encounter. It’s like a fuck! So, timing is very important. 
 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. 
 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. 
 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. 
 In the act of love, as in photography, there is a form of life and a kind of slow death. 
 I would say my sex drive is weaker than most. However, my lens has a permanent erection. 
 The camera itself, the photograph itself, calls up death. 
 Don’t you think that it is necessary to have a sense of brutality in photography?