One of the most radical and controversial photographers of our time, Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki has been documenting social taboos surrounding sexuality and death for forty years. His work encompasses contemporary Japanese subculture, from poetic scenes of old Tokyo, to the dark side of urban life and female bodies in an array of erotic, fantasy settings. To his critics, he is no more than a pornographer and a misogynist; to his supporters he is a radical and a revolutionary, a figure who has challenged not just artistic limits but also social limits in post-war Japan. Nobuyoshi Araki: Self, Life, Death (Phaidon Press) is the definitive book on the artist and includes the first English translations of Araki's writings as well as 1,200 photographs and an illustrated bibliography of 200 of Araki's own books by scholar Kotaro Iizawa.

How to package a 720-page book by a photographer known primarily for his photos of sprawling naked Japanese women? As elegantly and understated as possible. Somehow, it becomes even more transgressive.