The 'Love's Body - Rethinking Naked and Nude in Photography' exhibition which was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography from November 1998 to January 1999 was received with great acclaim. It demonstrated that in addition to acting as symbols of eros or sex, nude photography can be used as a tool to reassess the visual dynamics of relationship or subjectivity to present new possibilities and meanings of the body. The sequel to this, 'Love's Body 2, sexuality in the age of AIDS', will aim to present more clearly the problems created by contemporary representations of the body.

AIDS is a problem common to every country throughout the contemporary world. From the late eighties to early nineties AIDS became more than just an incurable disease that took the lives of numerous artists, it also provided photography and art with the opportunity to carry out a fundamental reassessment of social problems such as prejudice or discrimination. In their work, the many artists who were infected with AIDS confronted not only the disease itself, but also these 'social sicknesses', treating them as personal issues and creating numerous works that forced us to address these problems. Even today, new possibilities of expression that force us to consider transformations of sexuality or expressions of others, representations of the body or questions of art and politics continue to be produced. This exhibition will present works that are powerful enough to have influenced aspects of art and photography while reappraising and redefining their meaning.

Artists: AA Bronson, Peter Hujar, Hervé Guibert, Sunil Gupta, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Wojnarowicz, William Yang, Akira the Hustler/Cho Yukio

* The text provided by Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

Opened dates: October 2 - December 5, 2010