Of the magnified – and much shown – Nobuyoshi Araki, we imagined (presumptuously?) knowing, if not everything, at least the essentials. But, that’s not the Shi Nikki (Private Diary) for Robert Frank which will blaze new trails. Exhibited at the Bourse de commerce, the black and white series comprises 101 identically formatted images which, as conceived in the early 1990s, unite in mourning the famous 81-year-old Japanese photographer and his no less illustrious American counterpart, the the first having just lost his wife, who died of cancer, and the second, his son, following his daughter. Deliberately stingy with indications – which leaves the commissioner, Matthieu Humery, plenty of time to embroider – Araki alternates the famous female nudes, often duly dressed in bondage format (kinbaku, in VO), as explicit as they are cold, and street scenes where the he Tokyo atmosphere is adorned with gloomy tones. Until giving the whole, before which we are asked to bow, a touch of polite boredom which no one can guarantee that it is formally premeditated.
