A question I ponder is what is it in my own photographs that leads me onward? I shoot candid portraits, primarily, almost all of them of women, although I've done portrait sessions with men that have held my interest. Araki shoots portraits of women too, almost exclusively nudes, and some of them, such as those that arrived yesterday in Tokyo Lucky Hole (yes, that's what he's referring to) seem to be a cross between slipshod street snapshots and gynecological studies, treatments done in the kind of smirky ten year old reality you'd expect to find in a third rate men's magazine.

I've always had this idea you have to listen carefully, look out of the corner of your eye, muck about in the mud of your subconscious to identify whatever phantom it is you're looking to find by shooting pictures. You don't find your passion in “photography”, as such, you find your passion in creating a particular image or feeling and finding that particular image or feeling is difficult amid the constant noise of societal opinion about what is “good” and what is “bad”. Once you've “found” it, following it without being distracted can be tricky, but it's a whole lot easier than figuring out what it is in the first place. Everyone is different, everyone brings whatever they bring to the table, to the, um, darkroom, and you generally find it by looking through the body of their work before you can identify it in any single one of their photographs.

So how does this relate to Araki? Well, I've been wondering: where did those portraits that struck me as so interesting in Tokyo Love come from and why does his much larger body of work leave me, well, wondering? Are they better than I understand? Wouldn't surprise me. Are they ultimately not very interesting, a moment of “bad boy” popularity that will rapidly fade once he's gone? Could be, but again, I wonder. He's clearly obsessed and I'm sure he clearly doesn't care one way or another what I may think about his photographs: I've already bought his books, after all. Obsession is a good indicator the artist has stumbled across his or her passion, although I wonder if obsession is just a symptom of something more essential. Ultimately, when it's all over, it's just you and the picture and you have to make up your own mind.

Evaluating Araki's work on my own terms is complicated by the fact that images, good or bad, of naked women can confuse the issue in a society that has so many hang ups about sexuality. We're talking about the US here, I have no idea how they handle sexuality in the very different culture of Japan. It's hard, in other words, to separate the art of the matter from the swell looking (naked) women.

So, I received Tokyo Lucky Hole yesterday (perhaps the title is more clever in the original Japanese), a book filled with a whole lot of pictures that struck me as out takes, the stuff you'd cull from the good stuff and leave lying on the floor, which I find curious. Maybe it's just I would have shot them differently, would have been looking for something other in their eyes, following my own obsession and I haven't figured out yet that every photographer reacts like this and that it just doesn't matter. I'm too old to only now be learning these lessons.

Monday. Halloween, the end of October, seven years now keeping a journal. Hard to know whether to laugh or to cry.