Sentimental Journey

45 years after his honeymoon holiday with wife Yoko
The limited reprint of a legendary photo book
“To live is to go through a sentimental journey, and to him, to photograph is to go through a sentimental journey,”
Yoko once said of Araki’s inseparable relationship with his medium.
Self-published in 1971, the rare original edition saw a print run of only a thousand copies. Now, the reprint the world has been waiting for has arrived.
After studying photography at university in the 1960s, the young Araki went on to pursue commercial work at Dentsu, an advertising agency where he met Yoko Aoki, who would later become his wife. In 1971, his first photobook, titled Sentimental Journey, was released. The self-published monograph was an intimate photo essay documenting both mundane and deeply intimate moments from the couple’s wedding and honeymoon. At the time, Araki’s overt depiction of sex garnered controversial attention from both critics and the press – but as the photographer has continued to insist, his desire to capture such moments stemmed from a natural impulse, rather than an intention to shock.