One of the most important living Japanese artists, Nobuyoshi Araki is a photographer whose work revolves around female eroticism and his fascination with Tokyo, Japan’s capital and the world’s most populous metropolis. Notorious for pictures that are both spectacularly compelling and shockingly obscene, Araki – who has created over 450 books in his lifetime – has an unearthly ability to make anything and everything appear erotic.

His controversial body of work featuring provocative depictions of female eroticism, bondage, and fetishism, has seen his oeuvre described as both erotic and pornographic and has provoked conflict with authorities in Japan and controversy in the West.