Whether they depict women as fully clothed, showing their breasts, or posing on sofas allowing the viewer to glimpse their vaginas, friends, or adolescent girls with innocent-looking faces, Nobuyoshi Araki’s photographs are sexual. This intense sexuality even characterizes his Tokyo cityscapes, the views of back courtyards, intersections, and landscapes with trees or cloudy skies.

Though years ago Araki wanted to break sexual taboos with his work, he also wanted to provoke a confrontation with the officials charged with protecting public order, which he actually succeeded in doing several times.