Benjo [Toilet].

While still working as a commercial photographer at the Dentsu advertising agency, Araki began to engage in diverse forms of his own artistic expression in his own artistic practice. In 1970, he formed the Geribara Three Musketeers with Dentsu colleagues Yaehata Koshiro and Ikeda Fukuo. In 1971, Takase Yoshio and Tamogami Naohisa joined, and the group became the Geribara 5 Reproductive Collective. Together, they explored the idea that photographs are always copies of something else (whether of a negative or of the world they depict) and as a self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek response to the Provoke collective and its interest in photobooks. They were later joined by guest member Tomoko 'Miss Geribara' Kamiguchi, with Araki as the primary member throughout. The group published three books, Benjo being the first. It contains photographs taken in Tokyo restrooms of the toilets and attendant graffiti.

First edition; (254 × 182 mm / 10 × 7¼ in); black & white photographs; side-stapled photo-illustrated white wrappers, sprung at hinges, small marks to first and last pages where previously adhered to covers,m gentle bend to one corner, faint minor foxing to covers, close to near-fine; [104]pp.

The Photobook: A History vol I, p296; Araki: Self, Life, Death, p694; A Book of Araki Books! 1970-2005, pp46-9; For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968-1979, pp162-167 (Exhibition checklist 24); The Japanese Photobook 1912-1990 (328).