Nobuyoshi Araki’s artistic style is what my grandmother would deem, rather risqué.

His work “frequently employing sexual subject matter, has often ignited controversy and earned him a degree of notoriety.” We have fondly deemed him the naked-ladies-in-bondage guy as one of his most popular subjects is naked ladies in bondage.

Araki’s photographs have been considered pornographic by many a critic. And these critics have been backed up by the police, who have arrested Araki a number of times for his sexually explicit photos. Though I’m down with minimizing the male gaze, outright censorship may not be the best way to achieve such a goal. And it’s certainly not the way to control Nobuyoshi, who is quite the free spirit. He claims to want to be remembered as purely “irresponsible and fun.”

His artistic career started after graduating from Chiba University in the early 1960s. He majored in photography and film and soon entered the workforce as a commercial photographer for an advertising firm called, Dentsu, where he met his future wife. The artist photographed his wife on their honeymoon in 1971 in a series called Sentimental Journey. Then she died of ovarian cancer – a process which he documented from beginning to end. This, of course, was only the beginning of Nobuyoshi’s documentation of women, which became increasingly sexualized as the years went by.

At the end of the day, Nobuyoshi’s photography is just the same stuff that Titian, Ingres, Schiele, Velázquez etc. loved so much. We get it, the female body is “interesting” and we can get away with looking at it for longer than appropriate in public if it’s deemed fine art and hung in the Louvre or any other prestigious museum. Where are the Guerrilla Girls when we need them?

But alas, there are still people out there who are chomping at the bit (pun intended) to work with him. Namely, a Nikkatsu Studio, which produces porn films (shocking), Lady Gaga, the Italian luxury brand Bottega Veneta, and the Icelandic musician, Björk, all of whom need to be looking out for rope burns.