45 | 1993

CAMERA AUSTRIA 45 focuses on the photographic works of two artists: Bernhard Prinz and Nobuyoshi Arkai. Herta Wolf, in her essay, has touched upon the allegorical process by which these images work, with particular reference to Bernhard Prinz’ “Burn Marks”, a three-part work created in 1992. She proposes to read these images as one would read a written text, relating them ,along that line, to “Epidemic Groth”, a work which was begun in the sam year and seems to confront the allegories a priori as an alien element.

For publication in this issue, Nobuyoshi Arkai has given us his new work “Erotos”. Created in 1993 it is about to be published as a book in Japan. Many of our readers will have seen the AKT TOKYO exhibition (Akraki’s first individual show outside Japn and his first retrospective worldwide) or will know the catalogue book. The selection of color photographs here is based on that exhibition. In 1970, Araki made an exhibition titled “The Truth About Carmen Marie” (a popular singer at the time), which exclusively consisted of images of female genitals. About these images he said: “With these photos a new era of photography had begun. Our first job was to expose those areas that had been though of as being shameful. We couldn’t afford to be lazy about this-  we had to see clearly”.

A few weeks ago, in November 1993, a colleague in Tokyo, the curator of a renowned gallery, was arrested while selling the book AKT TOKYO and imprisoned for 12 days awaiting trial. The permissive liberal attitude prevailing in Europe today should not make us forget the taboos still associated with the body as the representation of sexualtity. The success of the exhibition and the book (by which we are pleased, together with Ariaki and in his behalf) does demonstrate, after all, the bearing of the perception of “erotic”photography. In his interview with the two Austrian writers Walter Vogl and Roland Hagenberg, Araki very effectively communicates his way of dealing with the moral categories his work in controned with.

It might be argued that the 45th issue of CAMERA AUSTRIA should be a “jubilee number”; admittedly we have not even thought of it, or we do only now, as it is too late. However, we would like to use the occasion to thank our readers for their interest in CAMERA AUSTRIA as indicated  by the growing number of subscribers  and the encouraging feedback we receive. Since the 1st issue in 1980, our readers have always played an active role in shaping the magazine’s content- ample proof is the “Forum” section in each issue which introduces between 10 and 20 photographers (all readers of CAMERA AUSTRIA), whose work we regard as noteworthy. We believe that this mutual interest will continue to be a sound basis for our publication.

Christine Frisinghelli
Manfred Willmann