Farewell Photography

by Daidō Moriyama (Photographer)

This heavy, glossy, slipcased, reprinted reinterpretation of the legendary 1972 book, Farewell Photography brings a much-sought-after classic back into print under the strict supervision of the artist, Daido Moriyama. Together with the publisher, Moriyama worked with larger prints and chose higher contrasts, abolishing all text in order to emphasize the dynamic, broken, blurred, vertiginously tilted, starkly cropped and timeless photography reproduced here. Moriyama is one of the most respected and influential photographers today, and this book bears the testimony of his early work, with all of its alluring landmark elements. Almost resulting in mayhem, these accidentally continuous black-and-white images can feel both invasive and intimate, as they freeze the animate and inanimate world before it is gone. An overwhelming torrent of early talent by an extraordinary artist.

Genres: Photography, Japan, Art

276 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1972

About the author

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese: 森山 大道, Hepburn: Moriyama Daidō, born October 10, 1938) is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine Provoke.

Moriyama began his career as an assistant to photographer Eikoh Hosoe, a co-founder of the avant-garde photo cooperative Vivo, and made his mark with his first photobook Japan: A Photo Theater, published in 1968. His formative work in the 1960s boldly captured the darker qualities of urban life in postwar Japan in rough, unfettered fashion, filtering the rawness of human experience through sharply tilted angles, grained textures, harsh contrast, and blurred movements through the photographer's wandering gaze. Many of his well-known works from the 1960s and 1970s are read through the lenses of post-war reconstruction and post-Occupation cultural upheaval.

Moriyama continued to experiment with the representative possibilities offered by the camera in his 1969 Accident series, which was serialized over one year in the photo magazine Asahi Camera, in which he deployed his camera as a copying machine to reproduce existing media images. His 1972 photobook Farewell Photography, which was accompanied by an interview with his fellow Provoke photographer Takuma Nakahira, presents his radical effort to dismantle the medium.

Although the photobook is a favored format of presentation among Japanese photographers, Moriyama was particularly prolific: he has produced more than 150 photobooks since 1968.

Reviews

[Nam Pham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book when I was in Tokyo. The later day, I showed it to an old Japanese guy I met outside a bookstore, who was never heard of Daido Moriyama. 'Didn't he have a better camera?' - he commented.

The truth is, we don't need to care about 'what' he shot. The guy simply made no attempt to depict 'truthfully' one subject matter. No gloating over high definition. No love of one millions and one pixels. Simply, one could imagine, a kinky affair of piss and cum in one muddily violent and sadistic alley as the taker and the taken both adoring the gaze of strangers walking by.

Daido's way of raping and denouncing the subject matter - of blurring, cropping and forcefully forging all imageries into one dark matter - without regards of any orders or meaning - shifts the focus totally to himself. In that dark alley drenched of sweat smell, he claimed his existence. Or rather, declaiming his existence.

'I wanted to take photograph to its very end and nullify it.
[...] But the thing that was nullified was me [...]'

[lex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can admire the images stylistically, but they’re often too abstract for my taste. My enjoyment was also affected by this 2023 paperback from Getsuyosha. The binding is very stiff and the book doesn't open well at all. It’s a serious drawback as many of the photos are spread across two pages.

[Yannick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The canvas cover looks and feels really nice but the inside pages look like they came out an office printer