These two photographers discovered at different times. There are similar, both were born after the second world war and two atomic bombs that were dropped by the USA and lived in Tokyo as adults.
We’re interested with some subject, the dark or less appropriate side of culture. Katsumi Watanabe seems to have taken a more documentary approach to the subject mater. Photographing what he sees around him in the Shinjuku section of Tokyo during the 1960s and 1970s,or the blue light district also popular with Yakuza. This is something he would after work, where he apprenticed for several years in 1962 at a prestigious portrait studio.
Date of birth: 1941 in Morioka, City, Date of death: January 29, 2006
Nobuyoshi Araki on the other hand comes from a tradition of Art where he graduated with a degree, his work also works concerns itself with the dark side or the less accepted part of our existence. His controlled the photo from the models, space all elements orchestrated by him.
Date of birth: 1940 in Tokyo, Japan
Date of death: not dead yet
Both are portrait photographers interested in the character, creating an edge. That pull them forward out of the confusion background in to the light. This is something to see in films of the same period. The sharpness of the image is what draw me to their work. I can clearly see something reaches out. Pushing to reinterpret for myself, to make it part of my language.
