“If life is not interesting, photos will not be interesting,” Araki has said of his way of exposing his own life to searing daylight, a tremendously charming idiom that can at any time transform any place into a photographically magnetic realm.

Whether taking endless photos of the city, exchanges between cultural luminaries, carousing at bars, alleys in shadow, or female nudes; his sharpened sensitivity grasps at the fragments of ordinary living. They are at times overwhelmed with affection, such as when looking at his beloved wife and cat; betraying a state of naked mental exposure affixed to film. Clouds expressed in infinite variety alongside bursting flowers sprout from the magnolia resting in the hospital room alongside his wife Yoko’s departed soul. All emotionally discernable moments framed and fixed in film.

Araki – whose insight and sharpness the average person struggles to follow, had the awareness to mix provocative humor with pathos, all the while uttering casual observations to pierce the heart of things. “Taking photos is being alive. Same as breathing and having a pulse,” he said, and through his practicality, we gradually gain true sight of the world.