Nobuyoshi Araki is a pioneering Japanese photographer who has profoundly influenced contemporary photography over six decades. After studying at Chiba University and working in advertising, he devoted himself to personal work exploring intimacy, eroticism, urban Tokyo, and mortality. His diaristic style merges raw emotion with formal technique, using flash and grain to create vivid immediacy.

Araki has published over 500 photobooks, including Sentimental Journey (1971), a chronicle of his honeymoon, and Winter Journey (1991), a meditation on grief following his wife Yoko's death. Major exhibitions were held at the Barbican, London (2005) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Photography Museum (2017). He received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 2012.

He lives and work in Tokyo.