Noritoshi Hirakawa

The reason of life. 1998. c-prints. 56.5 x 37.5 cm

Japanese photographer and performance artist NORITOSHI HIRAKAWA often portrays attractive young women performing some sort of titillating sexual act. His work questions the prejudice and hostility towards male heterosexuality today. According to HIRAKAWA the so-called sexual revolution is over and all is lost. Sexuality is stil and will forever be viewed as a cardinal sin: Although sexuality is non-institutional, it possesses at the same time a quality found both within and without institutional life. In our institutional lives, this quality produces a division of the human being into two images: the one public and the other private.  When the private image, one’s own sexual attraction, is censored in the public realm, while at the same time printed information about a person from familiar surroundings is provided in place of the missing criteria, the question arises as to how the observer would react to the new image of the person.

The result is quite possibly the temptation to establish a personal relationship with the person if the observer has the means with which to deal with the censorship on his own.

NORITOSHI HIRAKAWA lives and works in New York

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