Nobuyoshi Araki: The Banquet: Books on Books No. 15

First published in Japan in 1993, Nobuyoshi Araki’s The Banquet (Shokuji) offers a moving tribute to the photographer’s late wife, Yoko, through a photo-diary of the food they shared together in the last months of her life. The book is composed of three related sections: commercial color photographs of meals shot by Araki from 1985 onwards, using a ring flash and a macro lens; a (written) food diary; and black-and-white photographs taken at home, using only available light, a series Araki began after doctors told his wife she had only a month to live. As Martin Parr and Gerry Badger observe, “The obvious metaphor is to suggest that the color was leaving Araki’s world, but his intentions are not quite so simple. The retreat from color is a retreat from realism to romanticism....” This deeply personal diary of loss is here reprinted in its entirety along with an essay by Ivan Vartanian.Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist.