About the photographer: Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo in 1940 and was given a camera, at the age of 12, by his father. He studied photography and film at Chiba University and went into commercial photography soon after graduating. In 1970 he created his famous Xeroxed Photography Book, which he produced in a limited edition and sent to friends, art critics and people randomly selected from the phone book. Over the years, Araki’s bold unabashed photographs have been the object of a great deal of censorship, especially in his native Japan, a fact that has not hindered him or diminished his influence in the least. To date, Araki has published more than 250 books of his work. TASCHEN’s Araki is the most comprehensive and lavish volume yet.

About the Author: Jerome Sans is currently the Associate Director of the Palais de Tokyo Contemporary Art Center in Paris. He has mounted many exhibitions in France and abroad as an independent curator. Some of his recent projects include "Le Printemps de Cahor" Cahor, France (1997 – 1998), "Taipei Biennia l- The Sky is the Limit", Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2000), among various projects in Asia dealing with Asian artists. He has been the Adjunct Curator at the Institute of Visual Arts, University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee); editor of Gallery Magazine, and will be the commissioner for the French Pavilion in the next Venice Biennial. He is also a board member for the Benesse Prize of the Venice Biennial. Jerome Sans has worked previously with Araki in "Le Printemps de Cahor" (1998).