Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective at The Photographers' Gallery
We visit The Photographers' Gallery's major new retrospective...
By
Shin Hui Lee
October 13, 2023
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Daido Moriyama has never believed in the higher power of art. “For me, photography is not a means by which to create a beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality at the point where the enormous fragments of the world…coincide with my own inextricable predicament.”, the Japanese photographer once explained. Embracing the inherent limitations of his chosen medium, he devoted himself to relentlessly capturing things simply as he saw them rather than striving to assert some impossible objective truth about them.
Comprising over 200 works, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is the first exhibition in The Photographers’ Gallery’s 52-year history to occupy the entire institutional space. Presented chronologically from the 1960s to today, the exhibition is a visceral odyssey into the myriad facets of Moriyama’s career- his reflections upon the insatiable effects of globalisation, capitalism and mass consumerism reverberating timelessly.
Beginning on the top floor of the gallery, viewers are introduced to Moriyama’s early photojournalistic works. In his often-overlooked Accident (1969) series, his lens gravitates towards the uglier, grittier, more grotesque aspects of society as he grows increasingly wary of the unbridled economic growth of post-war Japan. By appropriating American television news broadcasts, sensationalised crime scenes and illicit celebrity affairs, he turns the widely accepted notion of socially engaged photography on its head by exposing the irreconcilable distance between real events and their images. It is in this vein that Moriyama developed his signature are bure boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focused) aesthetic - his insistence on shooting everything and anything speaking to his democratic approach to offering multitudinous perspectives of reality in the face of his jaded belief in the capacity of photography to make any real change in the world.
Other highlights on this floor include Moriyama’s contribution to issue 3 of Provoke Magazine (1968-1970). Subverting Andy Warhol’s colourful soup cans, endless rows of supermarket goods are shrouded in sharply contrasting black-and-white shadows, reiterating his marked scepticism of the dissolution of traditional Japanese values at the hands of proliferating Western social, political and economic forces. Fittingly, the corner of the room then reveals Moriyama’s most famous photograph Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971) - in many ways an affecting metaphorical self-portrait of the lonesome, disenchanted photographer he felt he was becoming.
Indeed, as we move to the fourth floor, we detect a shift in Moriyama’s visual language. Increasingly cynical about the conventional photographic ideals of the time, he compiled a series of old negatives, film ends and rejected prints into his photobook Farewell Photography (1972). For all the strictures we place upon the determination of ‘good art’ and the constitution of a ‘good artist’, the book stands as an operatic defiance of that. There is an almost tragic poignancy to be found in this amalgamation of the unwanted, so to speak. On one hand, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the vastness of life and the gift some like Moriyama are given of capturing it, but also a daunting thing to know that there is still so much we have not and may never be able to set our eyes on. Offering the entirety of the photobook in the form of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, as the gallery does here, presents a challenge for the work exhibited at the top. Less would perhaps have been more in this instance.
The exhibition is at its most special when it pares itself back and returns to the roots of Moriyama’s work. Averse to presenting his works in a gallery, Moriyama has always cited magazines as the heart of his practice. The third floor is home to a simple room with a table, a few chairs and a selection of Moriyama’s photobooks and magazines made available for visitors to peruse in their original format and sequencing. The inclusion of this opportunity to experience his works in their intended manner serves as a lovely denouement to the exhibition, in its self-conscious recognition of the dissonance of the static institutional space and the furious urgency and immediacy of Moriyama’s practice.
As a whole, Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is a riveting account of the 85-year-old’s lifelong pursuit of the limits of the photographic medium. It is a prophetic reminder of the corrosive effects of progress and expansion at all costs, which have throughout history threatened the preservation of our rich and unique ways of life. Fraught with beauty and tension, Moriyama’s visceral black-and-white photographs evince our shared human impulse to make sense of a world that inherently eludes our comprehension.
“The crushing force of time is before my eyes, and I try to keep pressing the shutter release of the camera. In this inevitable race between the two of us, I feel I am going to be burnt up.”
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective is on view at The Photographers’ Gallery until 11th February 2024.
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
