IMAGE FORMING APPARATUS

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent an image carrier from being damaged by a contact and separation operation of a cleaning blade in an image forming apparatus.SOLUTION: An image forming apparatus comprises: an image carrier 10 for carrying a toner image; a cleaning blade 13 which comes into press contact with the surface of the image carrier 10 in order to remove foreign matters including residual toner; and contacting and separating means (cams 25a to 25d) for causing contact and separation of the cleaning blade 13 with respect to the surface of the image carrier 10. The image carrier 10 may be rotationally driven in a direction opposite to the normal rotation (arrow a) during image forming, and the cleaning blade 13 is separated from the image carrier 10 when the image carrier 10 is rotated in reverse and is press-contacted with the image carrier 10 before the image carrier 10 starts to be rotated forward.