Peter Hujar-Eyes Open in the Dark

Unflinching and at times dark, he captured intellectuals, luminaries, and members of New York City subculture in moments of disarmed vulnerability. Hujar embraced male sexuality unabashedly and was unafraid to examine death and dying. In her introduction to “Portraits in Life and Death”, Susan Sontag wrote, “…Fleshed and moist-eyed friends and acquaintances stand, sit, slouch, mostly lie – and are made to appear to meditate on their own mortality…Peter Hujar knows that portraits in life are always, also, portraits in death”.

By Dimitris Lempesis

Photo: Raven Row Archive

Michael Kenna-Bridges of Michael Kenna

Michael Kenna is best known for his black-and-white landscape photography in which he often utilizes drawn-out exposure times, some up to 10 hours in length. Most of Michael Kenna’s photography is taken at dawn or at night, and he has commented that you can’t always see what’s otherwise noticeable during the day … with long exposures you can photograph what the human eye is incapable of seeing.

By Dimitris Lempesis

Photo: Robert Mann Gallery

Nobuyoshi Araki

Nobuyoshi Araki 

Today is the occasion to bear in mind Nobuyoshi Araki (1940). For over half a century, Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki has devoted himself to plumbing the depths of that which is most intimate – the invisible, intangible spirit that animates our very flesh. In his hands, the erotic transcends the mere functionality of pornography and reveals the raw intensity of the emotional, physical, and psychological self that gives sex its power. Through documents or interviews, starting with: moments and memories, we reveal out from the past-unknown sides of big personalities, who left their indelible traces in time and history…

By Dimitris Lempesis

Chema Madoz / Poetry

POETRY

by Chema Madoz

Chema Madoz

Pedro Genaro Rodríguez / Treasures of a Cimarrón

"Treasures of a Cimarrón", Photojournalism/Documentary Category.
by Pedro Genaro

Pedro Genaro Rodríguez

TREASURES OF A CIMARRÓN

Lullaby

Lean, Mean, Killing Machine

Albert Watson / Photos

Vivienne Westwood Shoe
New York City, 1993
Photo by Albert Watson

Albert Watson

PHOTOS

Rodney Smith / Hats

Rodney Smith

HATS

2
3

Gerd Bonfert / Photos

PHOTOS

by Gerd Bonferd

Kustulka / Photos

Kustulka

PHOTOS

Txema Yeste / Photos

PHOTOS

by Txema Yeste

With his technical prowess and flair for experimentation, Barcelona-based photographer Txema Yeste's star is on the rise at the moment, and he's currently one of the most interesting and adventurous fashion photographers working. You never know which direction his next editorial is going to go in, which is great.

Bill Wadman / Dance

Bill Wadman

DANCE

Nobuyoshi Araki / Crossing Boundaries

Crossing Boundaries

An Interview with Nobuyoshi Araki

Hyewon Yi

Skip other details (including permanent urls, DOI, citation information)

Volume 1, Issue 2, Spring 2011

This interview with Nobuyoshi Araki was conducted on October 28, 2010, in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan by Hyewon Yi, as part of her research on participant/observer photography. Yuko Teshima Fujii assisted with interpretation during the interview and translation of the transcript. Kikuko Tanaka also assisted with translation of the transcript. The interviewer thanks Mashiyama Takayuki of Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, for arranging the interview, reviewing the transcript, expediting permission to publish the accompanying photographs, and countless other courtesies.  Warning: The interview contains sexually explicit language.

Nobuyoshi Araki / Intimate photography

Nobuyoshi Araki

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI

Intimate photography: 

Tokyo, nostalgia and sex

BY C.D. Liddell

26 november 2006

Usually reviews of Nobuyoshi Araki’s work start by pointing out the contradictions “monster,” “genius,” “pornographer,” “artist,” etc. The greatest negative routinely cited is his attitude toward women, photographed smeared with paint or bound in bondage ropes, images that reflect attitudes rooted in Edo’s ancient past or Tokyo’s modern sexual underworld.

But this kind of moralistic approach doesn’t quite fit a subject like Araki, who is more a force of nature, existing, in some Nietzschean space beyond good and evil, or at least “good and evil” as defined by middle-class Western journalists like Adrian Searle in The Guardian. In a review of the show “Nobuyoshi Araki: Self, Life, Death,” at London’s Barbican last year, Searle slyly hinted that Araki’s depictions of women placed him beyond the pale of some liberal leftwing acceptability, before trying to find some level on which he could be “redeemed.’‘

Musuk Nolte / Photos

Musuk Nolte

PHOTOS

Rye Murakami / On the casting couch

Review

On the casting couch

This article is more than 17 years old

Irvine Welsh races through Ryu Murakami's psychosexual thriller

Irvine Welsh
Saturday 17 January 2009

The dustjacket of Ryu Murakami's latest novel, Audition, somewhat pompously describes the author as a "renaissance man for the modern age". This contention is amusingly backed up by citing his previous incarnations as drummer in a rock band and TV chatshow host. Clearly, someone at either Bloomsbury or the original publisher in Japan does irony in spades.

Ryu Murakami, cult Japanese author, dies aged 74

The bestselling writer, known as Japan’s enfant terrible, explored the dark underbelly of Japanese society in more than 40 works of subversive fiction including Audition, later made into a landmark indie horror movie

Woman sitting on bed with flying books

Top 5 books to start reading classics

Easy-entry classics that show it’s time to dust off the shelves

27 SEPTEMBER 2025, 

KSENIIA GAVRILOVA

There’s always been some kind of allure of reading the classics. Take for instance Rory Gilmore curled up with the book or Maeve Wiley casually dropping sharp references to Virginia Woolf. They inspired the whole Lit Girl aesthetic, attracting viewers by their intellect, depth, and wit.

Art Spielgelman

Art Spiegelman: ‘Banning books never works. It ignites interest in the forbidden’

The cartoonist speaks to EL PAÍS about the recent controversy sparked in Tennessee over his masterpiece ‘Maus,’ attributing the episode to ‘a cultural trend in America’

Iker Seisdedos

February 15, 2022

Art Spiegelman, 73, describes himself as a “First Amendment fundamentalist,” alluding to freedom of expression and religion. “Just like those religious fundamentalists in Tennessee.” The famous cartoonist is talking about members of a local school board in McMinn County, Tennessee who recently decided to remove his masterpiece, Maus, from the middle school curriculum. The acclaimed graphic novel about the Holocaust is based on the memories of Spiegelman’s father, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

One of the virtual mansions on sale in Keys.

Would you like to own a luxury mansion for $2,400? Head to the metaverse

The sale of virtual properties and residences has taken off and is on track to exceed $990 million this year

SANDRA LÓPEZ LETÓN

Madrid - MAR 26, 2022 - 23:01 COT

The real estate world is making itself at home in the metaverse, that digital kingdom in which thousands of intangible properties are sold for millions of dollars every day, and where someone can also become the owner of a stunning mansion for no more than $2,400 – provided you can pay in the cryptocurrency the platform requires.

The Old Guard 2 review – Charlize Theron’s delayed Netflix sequel is an incomplete mess

 

Charlize Theron

The Old Guard 2 review – Charlize Theron’s delayed Netflix sequel is an incomplete mess

Five years after the first film came out, a misshapen action fantasy follow-up arrives with a baffling cliffhanger ending

Even with our thick-of-Covid desperation for anything that felt big at a time when life felt too small, there was more to The Old Guard than the average churned out Netflix mockbuster. Released in the hell of July 2020, it came with the requisite boxes ticked (big star, international locations, franchisable setup) but felt closer to the real thing than most, proving to be a hit for those eager for escapism, scoring one of the streamer’s biggest launches to date.