Nobuyoshi Araki's Sentimental Journey is an autobiographical project that intimately documents his relationship with his wife, Yoko Aoki. The project began in 1971 as Araki chronicled their honeymoon, marking the emergence of his signature "I-Photography"—a deeply personal approach influenced by Japan’s literary tradition of the confessional I-novel. The series evolved beyond the honeymoon to encompass their life together and Yoko’s eventual passing in 1990, culminating in the publication of Sentimental Journey/Winter Journey (1991), which expanded the narrative to include her illness, final days, and funeral. In 2010, Sentimental Journey/Spring Journey continued this trajectory, documenting the final days of their cat Chiro, a symbolic continuation of Yoko’s presence.
Influenced by the Provoke movement, which championed raw, subjective photography, Araki challenged the norms of objectivity in documentary photography by collapsing the barrier between photographer and subject. Themes of love, intimacy, loss, and mortality are central to the project, with Araki’s juxtaposition of Eros and Thanatos—sex and death—manifesting throughout the series. His candid and unfiltered style captures both moments of affection and the inexorable passage of time.
The aesthetic choices of the project, particularly its black-and-white format, contribute to its nostalgic and introspective tone, emphasizing raw emotion over technical perfection. Araki’s compositions often forgo conventional framing, emphasizing immediacy and spontaneity, which further reinforce the deeply personal nature of his work. He frequently shoots instinctively, sometimes without looking through the viewfinder, allowing his emotions to guide the photographic process.
Widely exhibited—Fondation Cartier, Paris (Journal intime, 1995); Barbican Art Gallery, London (Self, Life, Death, 2005); IMA Gallery, Tokyo (Sentimental Journey: The Complete Contact Sheets, 2016); Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (Sentimental Journey 1971–2017–, 2017); and Albertina Modern, Vienna (2021)—the cycle has been a fixture of major surveys.
