DAIDO MORIYAMA
Like many other photographers of his generation,
Moriyama witnessed the dramatic changes that
took place in Japan in the decades following
World War II. In response, he sought to invent
a new visual language to express the conflicting
realities of a society caught between tradition and
modernity. Following his studies in graphic design
in Osaka, Daido Moriyama decided to take up
photography and moved to Tokyo in 1961. There,
he gravitated toward the work of the avant-garde
photographers of the Vivo Agency, in particular
thatof Shomei Tomatsu and Eikoh Hosoe, drawing
from the former a fascination for the bizarre
underworld of Japanese street life and from the
latter a sense of the theatrical and the erotic.
It was also during this time that he discovered
the work of two American photographers,
William Klein and Robert Frank, developing
an interest in the action-oriented approach to
street photography that characterizes their work.
These photographers would notably influence
Moriyama’s photographic style, inspiring him to
capture his subjects while walking through the
streets, using a small hand-held camera as if it
were an extension of his body. These diverse
influences can be seen in his early work – when
he was starting out as a freelance photographer
in 1964 – as well as later in his contributions to
Provoke, an avant-garde photographic magazine
he joined in 1968. Out of focus, vertiginously
tilted or invasively cropped, Moriyama’s images
reflect the disjunctive nature of contemporary
urban experience.This style of black-and-white photography
would characterize the photographs of his first
publications, Japan: A Photo Theater (1968) and
Farewell, Photography (1972), and establish his
reputation as a photographer of international
importance.IMAGES OF TOKYO
Daido Moriyama’s work has frequently focused