Daido Moriyama – författare

Take an inspiring walk with legendary photographer Daido Moriyama while he explains his groundbreaking approach to street photography. For over half a century, Moriyama has provided a distinct vision of Japan and its people. Here he offers a unique opportunity for fans to learn about his methods, the cameras he uses, and the journeys he takes with a camera.

The direct sequel to a classic photobook: an exceptional selection of photographs from Daido Moriyama's seminal magazine publication from 2017 to today. Between June 1972 and July 1973, Daido Moriyama produced his own magazine publication, Kiroku, which was then referred to as Record. It became a diaristic journal of his work as it developed. In 2006, encouraged by the Japanese publisher Akio Nagasawa, Moriyama was able to resume publication of Record. The first thirty issues of Record were edited by Mark Holborn into the now classic 2017 photobook of the same title. Daido Moriyama: Record 2, also edited by Mark Holborn, picks up from where the original left off, with a selection of images and texts by Moriyama from issues thirty-one to fifty of the magazine. With Moriyama now in his eighties, Record 2 will likely be the end of the story. But despite his advancing years, the work is unmistakably Moriyama's aesthetic – fiercely contrasted images with fragmentary, intensely composed frames that express the vision of one of the greatest photographers.

Daido Moriyama is one of two new books this season in Thames & Hudson’s acclaimed ‘Photofile’ series. Each book brings together the best work of the world’s greatest photographers in an attractive format and at an easily affordable price. Hailed by The Times as ‘finely produced’, the books are printed to the highest standards. Each one contains some sixty full-page reproductions, together with a critical introduction and a full bibliography.

Inspired by the work of an earlier generation of Japanese photographers, especially by Shomei Tomatsu, and by William Klein’s seminal photographic book on New York, Daido Moriyama moved from Osaka to Tokyo in the early sixties to become a photographer. He became the leading exponent of a fierce new photographic style that corresponded perfectly to the abrasive and intense climate of Tokyo during a period of great social upheaval. His black and white pictures were marked by fierce contrast and fragmentary, even scratched, frames, which concealed his virtuoso printing. Between June 1972 and July 1973 he produced his own magazine publication, Kiroku, which was then referred to as Record. It became a diaristic journal of his work as it developed. Ten years ago he was able to resume publication of Record, which gradually expanded in extent. To date he has published thirty issues, a number of them including colour. The publication of Record as a book enables work from all thirty issues to be edited into a single sequence, punctuated by Moriyama’s own text as it appeared in the magazines. It used to be assumed that Moriyama’s peculiarly Japanese style was tied to his Tokyo roots. The evidence of the last ten years demonstrates that Moriyama, a restless world traveller, has been able to apply his unique vision to northern Europe, southern France, the cities of Florence, London, Barcelona, Taipei, Hong Kong, New York and Los Angeles as well as to the alleys of Osaka, and the landscape of Hokkaido. The book ends in Afghanistan.

“The dog in me tells me to seek out bustling streets, the cat tells me to enter every back-alley I come across, and the bug in me drags me towards the red-light quarters. Copying the world from the view of a lowlife, particularly loitering through Tokyo every day, I feel that this is all the meaning there is to my life and my taking photographs. ” (from Daido Moriyama’s afterword)“K” (from the Japanese “kei” for “view, vista”) collects Daido Moriyama’s latest photographs, fragments of the city, its corners and crannies of the city, the figures that populate it.

Throughout Daido Moriyama’s extensive career, he has continually sought new ways of presenting and recontextualizing his work, frequently recasting his images through the use of different printing techniques, installation, or re-editing and reformatting. In each iteration, images both old and new take on changed and newly charged significance. This volume, created during preparations for several international survey exhibitions, offers both the photographer and the viewer the opportunity to consider the photographer’s life work in a fresh light. The author has returned to his contact sheets from the past five decades, selecting previously known images as well as ones never before published. The pages offer reproductions of original contact sheets; sequences of new contact sheets made from recombined negative strips, which juxtapose images from the 1950s with those from the past ten years; and selections of individual images, both familiar and newly discovered. Together, these offer a compact and comprehensive assembly of the artist’s oeuvre, tracing recurring motifs and proposing startling new interpretations of some of his most iconic images. Moriyama has always sought meaning in the raw accumulation and gestalt of sequences of images. Labyrinth: Daido Moriyama makes public an exercise in reconsideration that the photographer has assigned to himself. In opening up this private process of re-examination to a wider public, Moriyama continues to challenge the viewer and his own practice, as well as the larger mechanisms by which photography functions and creates meaning.

Daido Moriyama’s “Paris Plus” is a small hardcover publication containing 311 images within its 504 pages. Published in 2013 by Getsuyosha, “Paris Plus” is a visually condensed photographic narrative of several visits Moriyama has made to the city in between the years 1988, 1990 and 2003. The images of Paris bound within the pages of this photobook is as much a documentation of the city’s people and landscapes as much as it is a remnant of Moriyama’s fragmented experiences and engagements with the city throughout his life. The black and white images run through from page to page, echoing the shutter’s lens as much as it does the photographing eye. What is evident within this small hardcover publication is a record of a series of moments, capturing a visualized experience of a city space and its individuals caught within movement and frozen within the exposed black and white film within Moriyama’s frame.

Published in 2014 by Getsuyosha, Daido Moriyama’s “New Shinjuku” is a re-edited publication of his high sought after and acclaimed photobook “Shinjuku”. Found within the 752 bound pages are 641 full bleed images printed on black and white plates. This publication includes more than 100 unpublished images and would appeal to those both familiar and unfamiliar with Moriyama’s works.

"The title of this book, Dog and Mesh Tights came to me suddenly one day recently as I was walking through the streets of the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo. Most of the subjects depicted here are those that I spotted on the streets, on the exterior walls of buildings or lying in the gutter during the course of my everyday life, things that tend to remain unnoticed, obscure corners of largely deserted back alleys, or human figures that linger inconspicuously - things that catch my eye but generally remain unremarked. In a way I think they can be said to resemble the world as seen through the eye of a dog" - Daido Moriyama

Originally published in 1968 – the year which also saw the launch of the influential Provoke magazine – the book already demonstrates Moriyama’s trademark visual style. On invitation of Japanese writer Shuji Terayama, Moriyama began photographing members of a traveling theater group, adding shots of dwarf show dancers, strip clubs, street performers, fetuses in formaldehyde containers and other motifs.“Japan, A Photo Theater” concludes with detailed information regarding the photographs’ creation and their first appearances in Japanese magazines.

Daido Moriyama’s photobook “Letters to N” is a personal message from Moriyama to his good friend, the late Takuma Nakahira. Shot with a digital camera in the Shonan region, including the towns of Kamakura, Zushi, and Hayama, Moriyama drafts a visual letter composed of everyday scenes in black and white to his dear companion. The book includes an afterword by Moriyama and a series of letters to Takuma written thirty years ago, after Takuma suffered a loss of memory, and originally published in a literary magazine (all text included in Japanese & in English translation). “I know you love the summer, so I wonder, are you still visiting Zushi and the beach there? Are you still chasing fish around the cliffs at Hayama? When you’re in the water, to me you almost looked like a fish yourself. Are you still spending time at the sea where we used to go for a dive almost every day?”? from Daido Moriyama’s letter to Nakahira from January 1988

“Provocative Relationship – Daido Moriyama x Takuma Nakahira” is the official catalog for the exhibition of the same title, held at The Museum of Modern Art, Hayama from July 15 to September 24, 2023.Both the catalog and the exhibition represent an invaluable attempt to trace the artistic relationship between Daido Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira, as well as the complex and fundamental ways in which they have influenced each other. Moriyama and Nakahira first met through Shomei Tomatsu in the 1960s, worked together on the highly-influential “Provoke” magazine, and continued to stimulate each other’s creative and intellectual approach until Nakahira’s death in 2015. In addition to photographs documenting the exhibition itself, the book explores their relationship in seven chronological chapters.The book concludes with several texts written by both photographers, as well as an edited version of the infamous Hilltop Hotel interview between Moriyama and Nakahira. Please note that all text is only included in Japanese.