Daido Moriyama

Daido Moriyama

This is far from the first time I've mentioned Daido Moriyama, and I doubt it will be the last. You see I absolutely love his work, that's why he's in my "Gods" section, only the 5th so far (here's the others) http://manchesterphotography.blogspot.com/search/label/Gods I have scoured the tinterweb to find you the best links/interviews with this fella, like this one as a taster: http://www.bigempire.com/sake/daido_moriyama.html. I mentioned in a previous post about his choice of hardware, the Ricoh GRs 35mm compact. This is not the geek in me talking, his camera choice is vital to why I feel he is important as a photographer.

Take a look at the above picture taken early in his career and perhaps his most famous picture. What strikes you about it? What it shouts to me is "snapshot" and that's what he does. That's why the little Ricoh is important. You've got to carry a camera to take photographs it's that simple. I love this self portrait of him on his homepage:
http://www.moriyamadaido.com/ go look at the slideshows in his gallery section. It won't work if it's translated so look then translate, unless of course you speak Japanese.

These are images, lots of images working together as a whole. These are pawed over, looked at studied contact sheets, these are retrospective shots. Perhaps some of them are "Decisive moments" Catier Bresson style http://www.e-photobooks.com/cartier-bresson/decisive-moment.html but I think that more of his work will have been taken back to his studio to be analysed, sifted like that most urban of stalwart's "The Ragpicker" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0422/is_1_82/ai_63910535/pg_5

He is using the great strength of digital photography before we or he had it. And make no mistake that's where the new territories lie. As William Eggleston and Stephen Shore made headway with colour, Moriyama's take first think later style is so suited to digital photography. I believe that if we take a leaf out of his book we could really do something exciting with little digi camera's.

Some links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriyama_Daido
http://punctum.typepad.com/the_space_in_between/daido_moriyama/
http://colinpantall2.blogspot.com/2008/01/daido-moriyama-memories-of-dog.html
http://www.beautifuldaze.org/2008/02/daido-moriyama-55-phaidon-press.html