In the tumultuous 1960’s photography sought it place in the public discourse; in Tokyo the photographic world was buzzing with the ambitious exhibition A CENTURY OF PHOTOGRAPHY (1968), while in the publishing world the major happening was the the launch of the magazine Provoke, created and published by art critic Koji Taki, poet Takahiko Hokada and photographers Yutaka Takahashi and Takuma Nakahira. With the subtitle “Provocative Materials for Thought,” the publication reflected the heated climate of the time. “Images do not constitute thought in themselves,” Provoke’s editorial roared. “What we photographers can do, indeed must do, is capture with our eyes those fragments of reality which are utterly impossible to capture with existing world, and actively keep creating materials to confront those world and thoughts.” To overcome what they saw as staged, it was necessary to challenge the idea of neutrality of the image and of photgraphic equipments, investigating layers that are barely visible. Takahiko Okada suggested that the truth of the image lay in the investigation of the human being who should confront the forms of organization of society, the economy and the family, in search of subterranean, unknown, and demonic forces. Moriyama debuted in the magazine’s second issue, released in 1969 under the theme “Eros”; in this issue Okada wrote about the relationship between image, eroticism and fetishism. The poet argued that the material progress of society offered false cultural progress in exchange of for the increasing repression of individuals’ sexual desires with repression turning into the consumption of images “The excessive maturation of capitalist society, like rotting overripe fruit, causes sexual phenomena and sexual images to spread.” Replacing reality with a simulacrum brought the sexual debate closer to discussion about mass society, and the consumption of images. “Representation of reality seems more real then reality itself, at which point that conduit is not only not performing its function but is generating, in a like manner, the perverted phenomenon in which what the media delivers is received and fetishistically enjoyed”, he summarized.
Roland Barthes wrote in his essay “Camera Lucida - Reflections on photography” that one of the distinguished marks of our times is this overturning in which our lives are based upon a generalized imaginary; Such a reversal inevitably raises the ethical question—not because the image is immoral or diabolic, but because, if generalized, it ends up derealizing the human world of conflict and desire, rather it wants to illustrate it. What characterizes so-called advanced societies is that today they consume images rather than, as in the past, beliefs. They are therefore more liberal, less fanatical, but also more 'false'—less 'authentic'.
Noubuyoshi Araki the same age of Moriyama began developing his style from a homemade collection of photographies, he quickly connects the phots with his personal style, which at the time were associated with copy, mass media and printed materials. At the same time he was presenting sexuality in an explicit fashion. There was a fake quality to the staged photos in which Araki himself appeared, mixing fiction with reality.
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