荒木经惟对他的“缪斯”做了什么

TOKYO — How much does an artist owe his muse?

东京——一个艺术家应该给他的缪斯多少回报?

Last month a model who posed for Nobuyoshi Araki, Japan’s most notorious photographer, accused him of exploiting and bullying her for 16 years.

上月，恶名昭彰的日本摄影师荒木经惟(Nobuyoshi Araki)的御用模特指控他剥削和伤害她16年。

Now, with a New York exhibition featuring the work of Mr. Araki, known for his sexually explicit images of women, the accusations are raising questions about the power dynamics between a photographer and his subject.

荒木经惟以暴露的女性作品著称，其中一些目前正在纽约展出。相关指控引发了人们对摄影师和拍摄对象权力对比的质疑。

In a blog post published in Japanese in early April after “The Incomplete Araki” opened at the Museum of Sex in Manhattan, the model, Kaori — who uses only her first name — said that over their working relationship, Mr. Araki never signed her to a professional contract; ignored her requests for privacy during photo shoots; neglected to inform her when pictures of her were published or displayed; and often did not pay her.

“不完整的荒木”(The Incomplete Araki)4月初在曼哈顿性爱博物馆(Museum of Sex)开展后，只愿透露自己叫香织(Kaori，音)的这名模特在一篇用日语发布的博文中称，在他们的工作关系中，荒木经惟从没和她签过专业合同，在拍摄期间无视她的隐私请求，在她的照片发表或展出时忘记通知她，并且经常不付钱给她。

“He treated me like an object,” she wrote.

“他把我当成一件物品，”她写道。

In an interview in Tokyo, Kaori, who stopped working with Mr. Araki two years ago, said she felt empowered to speak out by the international reckoning about sexual harassment and assault known as the #MeToo movement.

在东京接受采访时，已在两年前停止与荒木经惟合作的香织说，全球反性骚扰和侵犯运动#MeToo(“我也是”)让她觉得自己有了发声的力量。

Kaori, who began posing for Mr. Araki, now 77, in her early 20s, has not accused him of sexual assault. Instead, she said she felt emotionally bullied by an artist who never acknowledged her as a creative partner.

香织在20岁出头的时候就开始当现年77岁的荒木经惟的拍摄模特。她没有指控他性侵。但她说她在感情上受到了一个艺术家的伤害，对方从未承认她是一个创作伙伴。

“I want them to know what happened in the past between me and Araki,” Kaori said last month. “I was not allowed to speak out. People should know, and they should look.” Mr. Araki declined repeated requests to comment.

“我想让他们知道过去我和荒木经惟之间发生了什么，”香织上月说。”“我过去不能说。人们应该知道，他们应该看到。”荒木经惟拒绝了记者多次提出的置评请求。

Mr. Araki’s work has long ignited controversy, given the provocative nature of his images, which include photographs of nude women bound up in a Japanese technique known as kinbaku-bi. He has been fined on obscenity charges in Japan, and while some critics consider him a maestro, others deem his work pornography.

由于作品的性挑逗意味，荒木的图片向来是争议的焦点，这其中包括用日本的一种称为“紧缚美”(kinbaku-bi)的手法捆绑起来的女性裸体。在日本，他曾因淫秽指控被罚款。一些评论家视他为大师，但也有人认为他的作品是色情制品。

Maggie Mustard, co-curator of the Museum of Sex exhibition, said Kaori’s allegations were forcing a new conversation about models’ rights.

性爱博物馆展的联合策展人玛吉·马斯塔德(Maggie Mustard)说，香织的指控迫使人们去讨论模特的权利。

“This gives us the opportunity to talk about what happens to a muse — and I use that word with air quotes — when she doesn’t have a contract or a sense of economic or legal agency about how her image was used,” Ms. Mustard said in a telephone interview.

“这给了我们一个机会去讨论缪斯——我会给这个词打个引号——当她在没有合同，不知道通过经济或法律手段约束自己照片的用途时会怎样，”马斯塔德在接受电话采访时说。

Ms. Mustard added that she had spoken with Kaori and would incorporate her comments into the exhibition’s programming materials. Already, the wall text mentions another model’s anonymous allegations of inappropriate sexual contact by Mr. Araki, noting that “the controversy surrounding Araki’s work has almost exclusively been about reception and meaning, and far less about the issues of consent and the potential abuses of power that can be at the foundation of artistic practice and artistic production.”

马斯塔德说她和香织有过交流，会把她的评论加进展览资料中。墙上的文字已经提到另一名模特对荒木经惟不当性接触的匿名指控，称“围绕荒木作品的争议几乎都只是关于褒贬和意义的，知情同意和权力滥用问题则谈得很少，而那可能是艺术实践和创作的基础”。

In Japan, Kaori’s disclosures come as women are just starting to raise questions about male power, sexual harassment and assault.

在香织做出这些揭露的同时，日本的女性正刚刚开始对男性权力、性骚扰和性侵犯提出质疑。

Last year, when one of Japan’s best-known television journalists was accused of rape, his accuser received only a smattering of attention in the Japanese media. Last month after a television reporter anonymously asserted that a high-level civil servant in the Finance Ministry had sexually harassed several women, the official resigned, although he has denied the charges. The ministry has acknowledged he harassed a reporter.

在一名日本知名电视记者去年被指控强奸时，控诉者在日本媒体上只获得了极少的关注。上个月，一名电视记者匿名举报一名财务省高级公务员性骚扰多名女性，该官员否认这一指控，但仍然辞去了职务。财务省承认他骚扰了一名记者。

In this staunchly patriarchal culture, women are often subservient to men. Japan consistently ranks low among developed countries on gender equality in health, education and the economy and has one of the world’s worst records for women in politics.

父权在日本文化中根深蒂固，女性往往服从于男性。这个国家在卫生、教育和经济方面的性别平等一直是发达国家中排名较低的，还是世界上女性参政情况最糟的国家之一。

For models working in Japan’s art world, it is difficult to make demands of a male artist.

在日本艺术界工作的模特很难向男性艺术家提出要求。

“I can imagine that as a male photographer who is more than 70 years old, he unconsciously has the perspective towards women that he can do whatever he wants,” said Yukie Kamiya, head of the Japan Society Gallery in New York, speaking of Mr. Araki. “Male power is such a common understanding, and women don’t have much of a voice.”

“我可以想象，作为一名超过70岁的男性摄影师，他无意识地产生了一种女性观，认为自己可以对她们为所欲为，”纽约日本协会画廊(Japan Society Gallery)负责人神谷幸江(Yukie Kamiya)这样评价荒木。“(在日本)男权是普遍共识，而女性没有太多的声音。”

Kaori, who trained in Paris as a dancer, began posing for Mr. Araki after meeting him at a party in 2001.

香织曾在巴黎接受舞蹈演员培训，2001年，她在一个派对上结识荒木，之后开始担任他的模特。

She said he paid her 100,000 yen (about $930) to pose in the studio wearing a kimono or performing dances that Mr. Araki would photograph. For nude projects, he took her to so-called “love hotels” and paid her about 50,000 yen for each assignment.

她说荒木付给她10万日元(约合930美元)，要她穿着和服摆姿势或跳舞，供他拍照。他还把她带到所谓的“爱情旅馆”拍摄裸体项目，每次支付她大约5万日元。

But she said he also called her for impromptu, unpaid sessions where he took photos while she walked in a park or sat in a bar at his command.

但她说，他还打电话约她出来做即兴的无偿拍摄，拍下她在公园里走路或在他的指挥下坐在酒吧里。

It was not enough to make a living. Asked how she supplemented her income, Kaori demurred. “I don’t want to say,” she said.

这些钱不够她维持生计。被问及其他的收入时，她有些迟疑。“我不想说这个，”她说。

In public, Mr. Araki described her as his “muse,” but she said he did not tell her when or where the work would be published or exhibited, and she had no say in how the images were composed. “For him, a muse means someone who doesn’t speak or have any of her own opinions and just keeps obeying his orders,” she said.

在公开场合，荒木说她是自己的“缪斯”，但她说，他从不告诉她作品会在何时何地发表或展出，她对图片的创作也没有发言权。“对他来说，缪斯就是一个不说话、没有任何自己观点的女人，只知道一直服从他的命令，”她说。

Early on, the two did have a consensual sexual relationship, Kaori said.

在早期，两人确实有过双方自愿的性关系，香织说。

During one photo session, she balked when he snapped Polaroid pictures of her and sold each individually without paying her any royalties. “That money that he earned is based on my contribution,” Kaori said.

一次拍摄期间，荒木把为她拍摄的宝丽来照片逐张出售，却没有支付她任何版税，她对此感到不快。“他赚的这笔钱是基于我的贡献，”香织说。

“He says, ‘I am Araki, and you must be happy and honored that I am taking a picture of you,’” she said.

她说：“他说，‘我是荒木，你应该为我给你拍照感到高兴和荣幸。’”

Kazuko Ito, a lawyer whom Kaori consulted last November, said Kaori told her that after nude photos appeared without her permission, a stalker broke into her home. Kaori asked the lawyer for help obtaining some rights to the photos, but Ms. Ito said that such disputes were very rare in Japan and that she was unlikely to win in court.

去年11月，香织咨询了律师伊藤和子(Kazuko Ito)。伊藤称香织告诉她，在裸照未经她允许发表后，一个跟踪狂闯入了她家。香织要求这名律师帮她争取这些照片的一些权利，但伊藤表示，这样的纠纷在日本非常罕见，她不太可能在法庭上胜诉。

Ms. Ito said she had heard similar complaints from other models for Mr. Araki.

伊藤表示，她听到了荒木的其他模特提出了类似的控诉。

Of course, power inequities between artists and models are not unique to him. “There has been no public discourse about this structural problem within the industry and the photographer-model relationship,” said Michio Hayashi, a professor of art history at Sophia University in Tokyo.

当然，艺术家和模特之间的权力不平等并不只存在他一个人身上。“目前，还没有关于这个行业的结构性问题以及摄影师和模特关系的公开讨论，”东京上智大学(Sophia University)的艺术史教授林道郎(Michio Hayashi)表示。

Kaori described one incident when foreign photographers came to observe Mr. Araki as he took pictures of her. She did not want to appear nude in front of strangers, she said, but Mr. Araki told her, “They aren’t here to photograph you, they’re here to photograph me.”

香织讲述了一件事。有几位外国摄影师来观看荒木给香织拍照。她表示，她不想在陌生人面前裸露身体，但荒木对她说，“他们不是来给你拍照的，他们是来给我拍照的。”

But when pictures from that session came out in print, Kaori appeared in them, naked. “He invited many photographers into the studio and he ordered me to spread my legs in front of that big audience,” she said. “I didn’t like that.”

等到那批照片印出来时，香织的裸体出现在上面。“他邀请了很多摄影师到摄影棚，还命令我当着那么多人的面把腿张开，”她说，“我不喜欢那样。”

Still, it took her a long time to quit as Mr. Araki’s model. She started working with him when she was young, and he was already famous. When he was hospitalized, she did not want to abandon him.

尽管如此，她还是过了很久才辞掉这份工作。她年轻时就开始与当时已经成名的荒木合作。后来他住院了，她不想抛弃他。

“Looking back now, everything was excessive and extreme,” she wrote on her blog. “Something in me was numb. He asked me to do abnormal things, and I did them as if they were normal.” At one point, she became suicidal.

“现在回想起来，一切都太过分、太极端了，”她在自己的博客上写道，“当时我心里是麻木的。他让我做一些不正常的事，我就照做了，好像那是正常的事一样。”她一度想自杀。

By 2015, the relationship had soured so badly that Mr. Araki insisted she sign a document vowing not to defame him or his business. In 2016, Kaori, who by then was running her own ballet school, stopped working with him.

到了2015年，他们的关系严重恶化，荒木坚持要求香织签署一份文件，发誓不会诋毁他或他的生意。2016年，香织不再与他合作了，经营起自己的芭蕾舞学校。

When she requested that he stop republishing or exhibiting some photographs of her, he warned in a March 2017 letter that she had no rights. “All models should understand the potential for unlimited use of the work,” he wrote in the letter, seen by The New York Times. “I will decide which publication, which exhibition, when to publish and what kind of products I will give permission to use my work. It’s all up to me.”

当她要求他停止再版或展出她的一些照片时，他在2017年3月的一封信中警告称，她没有这样的权利。“所有的模特都应该知道，作品是可以无限使用的，”他在信中写道。《纽约时报》查阅了这封信。“哪本出版物、哪个展览或哪种产品什么时候使用我的作品由我决定。一切都取决于我。”

Kaori said she did not expect an apology from Mr. Araki, and she is not asking the Museum of Sex to remove the three photos of her it is displaying.

香织表示，她并不指望荒木道歉，也不是要求性爱博物馆撤下正在展出的她的三张照片。

The work, she said, should serve as a reminder. All she wants, she said, is for visitors to “know my sad background and experience.”

她表示，这些作品应该成为一个提醒。她想要的只是让观众“了解我悲惨的背景和经历”。