Daidō Moriyama
Friday, 14 August 2009
Daidō Moriyama was born in 1938 in Osaka. He is easily one of the most important Japanese photographers since 1945. His work, depicting the breakdown of traditional values in post-war Japan, plays a central role in establishing Japanese photography as one of the most creative directions in the history of photography. His work was often stark and contrasting within itself. One image could convey an array of senses; all without using color. His work was jarring, yet symbiotic to his own fervent lifestyle. The photographs shown here are from the ‘Kyoku / Erotica’ series and reflects Daido Moriyama’s ambivalent perception of the world. For Moriyama, the world is both a danger zone and a minefield of sexual tension, a mixture of danger and allure.
“Moriyama is conspicuous for the brutality with which he distorts photographic description: his pictures are sooty with grain, blotchy with glare, often out of focus or blurred by movement, often defaced by scratches in their negatives. Because Moriyama is often looking through some barrier — steamy glass, a grille, a hole in a door –o ne may begin to squint a little before realizing that the picture will never get any clearer. None of this represents bad technique. It is wholly purposeful, and gives the photographer an expressive leverage perfectly adjusted to his subjects: if the actor impersonating a geisha was already grotesque before Moriyama arrived, the distortions that the photographer adds in evoke the shock of discovering him. Many of Moriyama’s pictures thus hit us doubly — with a frightening or repellent thing, and with a manner of rendering it that is the visual equivalent of nausea, vertigo or horror.” (Leo Rubinfien)
Introductory text adapted from Priska Pasquer.