Daido Moriyama: Tokyo

by Daidō Moriyama

Moriyama once said, ‘my work is endless, as long as the world exists I want to take snapshots'. Here a collection of full page black and white photographs presented under the theme Tokyo have been brought together, a number of which have never previously been published.

Genres: Photography, Japan, Art, Nonfiction

104 pages, Hardcover

Published October 10, 2005

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

[Cristhian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gran manera de iniciar este año.

[kelly]

japanese noir. provocative and propulsive snapshots of urban life (in gorgeous black and white) that capture the frenetic energy of japan's postwar era: strip clubs, subcultures gathering in a crowd... there's also lonelier, moodier images like city skylines at night taken from a dutch angle, empty alleyways.... one can imagine toshiro mifune (as a gangster or a detective) roaming these streets with takashi shimura as his partner.

[Willis Oliveira · Rating 4 out of 5]

É impressionante como Tokyo, principalmente através das lentes de Daido Moriyama, se parece clássica, atual e cyberpunk tudo de uma vez e em poucas fotos selecionadas! Não é à toa que é um dos lugares que mais tenho interesse em ir.

[Ferguson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of photographs taken by Mr. Moriyama in an already modernized Japan. It goes to show off how americanization hit hard Japan after WWII. Almost as a consequence, as a 'fallout' effect after the nukes that took way longer to fade away - maybe forever. The nuke should I say, not only made Japan lost the war but also changed Japan completely. It made Japan fall to the knees of the "west", and change both their culture and industry for better or worse - the triumph of democracy.

One of the pics that caught my attention especially was one which shows a wall filled with pornographic advertises and nude japanese women. It was funny, not to say sad. The west has given to Japan the gifts of porno and sexual freedom to some extent, the freedom of turning their women into whores (no wonder why Hayao Miyazaki hated America so much). And it was ironic, because a so called 'conservative' society like Japan, who portrays itself to be so 'traditional' can have such a dirty side. I think hentai goes off to show that aswell... Yikes!

[Sotiris Dimitrakopoulos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Μικρό φωτογραφικό βιβλίο απο έναν θρύλο για πολλούς της Ιαπωνίας στην φωτογραφία.Οι φωτογραφίες του είναι ασπρόμαυρες και είναι φωτογραφία δρόμου στην Ιαπωνία που αλλάζει. Παρόλα αυτά δεν το βρήκα τόσο ενδιαφέρον. Δεν μπόρεσα να συνδεθώ καθόλου με τις φωτογραφίες του. Τις βρήκα πολύ αφηρημένες και με καμία τεχνική υποστήριξη απο πίσώ που μπορεί να είναι και εσκεμένες. Θα ήθελα να υπήρχε σχετικός σχολιασμός για το τι σκεφτόταν ο moriyama στις φωτογραφέις αυτες. Τότε ίσως και να μπορούσα να καταλάβω καλύτερα το έργο του.

[Hazelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moriyama and Tokyo are a perfect match. His photos in Tokyo aren’t overly technical, but they capture the raw energy of the city. With each picture I felt like I was right there in the streets of Japan walking among the crowd with an sense of curiosity of my surroundings. His work is not about perfection but about making you feel the city in a real, unfiltered way.
Good but not completely amazing

[Eli]

photo of that one urinal stuck w me