Nobuyoshi Araki & Juergen Teller — Leben und Tod

Juergen Teller and Nobuyoshi Araki's shared book about a death in Teller's family, which grew out of the exhibition the two photographers showed together at artspace AM in Tokyo in 2019.

Its starting point is Teller's own series, Leben und Tod, or Life and Death, made after the death of Artur, his uncle and stepfather. Photographs of his mother and of his home ground in Bubenreuth, Bavaria, are set against pictures of fertility and new life taken while he was on holiday in Bhutan with Dovile Drizyte, his partner.

The series led Araki to ask if he might photograph objects from Teller's childhood that held strong memories for Teller and his parents. Teller gathered them: toys, a figurine in porcelain, and violin bridges made in the family workshop. Araki's photographs of these things run beside Teller's own sequence and add a second narrative to his.

Steidl, 2020. 72 pages, 26 x 19 cm.