The Banquet

The book is composed of three related sections: commercial color photographs of meals shot by Araki from 1985 onwards, using a ring flash and a macro lens; a (written) food diary; and black-and-white photographs taken at home, using only available light, a series Araki began after doctors told his wife she had only a month to live. As Martin Parr and Gerry Badger observe, "The obvious metaphor is to suggest that the color was leaving Araki's world, but his intentions are not quite so simple. The retreat from color is a retreat from realism to romanticism...."

This deeply personal diary of loss is here reprinted in its entirety along with an essay by Ivan Vartanian.