Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective

by Thyago Nogueira (Editor), Yutaka Kambayashi (Contributor), Satoshi Machiguchi (Contributor)

Widely considered Japan’s most influential and prolific photographer, Daido Moriyama has been challenging conventions of the art form for more than a half century. This exhaustive and electrifying retrospective, published in cooperation with the Daido Moriyama Foundation and based on entirely new research, looks at every stage of Moriyama’s extensive career, including his extraordinary images as well as his conceptual contributions to photography.

One of a generation of postwar Japan’s groundbreaking artists, Moriyama has continually established his own visual grammar.

This book features more than 250 chronologically arranged images that reveal his constantly evolving his early editorial work of the mid-1960s, focused on the American occupation and the experimental theater; his radical experimentation of late 1960s and the 1970s; the self-reflexive photos of the 1980s and 1990s; and his ongoing exploration of cities, among other relevant moments. It also includes more than 400 spread reproductions of Moriyama’s rarely seen publications, mapping the sources of his visual production.

Rounding out the volume are texts by the editor and leading Japanese scholars, a personal essay by the artist, and a full chronology of his life and work.

Accompanying a major exhibition on Moriyama’s output, this impressive volume reframes Moriyama’s legacy and is certain to become the definitive publication on his work.

Genres: Photography, Japan, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

Published August 8, 2023

Reviews

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe the best-designed and informative catalog of an artist's work that I've encountered.

[E. G.]

--Plates

Introduction: Daido Moriyama: The Retrospective

--Memories of a Dog 1: Path of Solitude, Daido Moriyama

--Daido Moriyama: The Various Realities of Image, Thyago Nogueira
Notes

--Eliminate the word "Art": The Genealogy of Art and Daido Moriyama's Photography, Yuri Mitsuda
Notes

--Between the Landscape and the Body: Snapshots of Daido Moriyama, Masako Toda
Notes

--The Photographer Daido Moriyama and the Magazine Kiroku/Record, Masashi Kohara
Notes

Selected Publications, 1965-1974
A Chronology, by Yutaka Kambayashi, Satoshi Machiguchi, and Kazuya Kimura
Sources
Other Sources
Image Credits
Acknowledgments

[Brandon Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I have no idea whether individual photographs contain ideals, worlds, history, humanity, beauty, ugliness, or nothingness. And in fact, I don’t really care. I simply extract and record things around me, without any pretensions” - Daido Moriyama