The title of the exhibition at the Musée Guimet, POLARAKI – Mille polaroids d’Araki Nobuyoshi, refers to 906 integral-type instant prints mounted in 391 frames.
Produced between 1997 and 2024, the polaroids by Araki shown in the exhibition were acquired over the last 25 years, mostly from French and Japanese galleries, by the collector Stéphane André, who donated them to the Musée Guimet on May 5th 2025. Installed in the rotunda on the museum’s fourth floor, POLARAKI recreates the display the collector devised for his apartment: 43 columns made up of 9 frames, hung edge to edge from floor to ceiling. In each frame, one, two, three or four polaroids, in groupings composed partly by Araki and partly by the collector.
A prolific, obsessive and deliberately provocative Japanese photographer, Araki Nobuyoshi has, since the 1960s, been an essential figure in the history of Japanese and international photography.
POLARAKI – Mille polaroids de Nobuyoshi Araki
Until January 12, 2026
Guimet – National Museum of Asian Arts
6, place d’Iéna
75116 Paris
https://www.guimet.fr/
