NOBUYOSHI ARAKI — Untitled, Tokyo Novelle. Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 1995. Card 1 of 5

Original exhibition postcard issued for Nobuyoshi Araki: Tokyo Novelle, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 25 November 1995–18 February 1996. Published by Gebr. König Postkartenverlag, Cologne. Card 1 from a series of five. Monochrome offset print on postcard stock, 10.5 × 15 cm.

Condition: Very good. Unposted, with light handling wear and a small lower-corner crease.

Araki had treated photography as a form of personal narrative since Sentimental Journey in 1971, moving between Tokyo, intimacy, eroticism and mortality through an exceptionally prolific sequence of photographs and books. By 1995, this private-looking image world was circulating widely through European museums and publishers.

Here, a photograph is reduced to postal scale and assigned a number within a five-card sequence. The exhibition becomes portable: artist, image, institution and dates compressed into a unit made for distribution. The photographic image sits within a Polaroid-like white border; exhibition dates and the museum’s whale emblem occupy the stamp box, while the publisher’s credit divides the reverse vertically.

Ships flat, securely card-backed and tracked from the UK.