
These three images are from a group of several dozen portraits of men that Araki created in the summer and fall of 1977. Similar features, such as the distinctive aquiline noses, curly hair, and mustaches, suggest that he was repeatedly depicting the same man in different angles and moods. As is often the case in Araki’s portraits, pools of ink, some representational and others seemingly more experimental flicks of the brush, conceal the men’s eyes or blot out parts of their faces.