MORIYAMA, Daido - Hunter of Light, 1965-2003

This photobook, 'Daido Moriyama: Hunter of Light, 1965-2003', has been published on the occasion of the major retrospective 2003 exhibition
with the same name at the Shimane Art Museum, the Kawasaki City Museum and the Kushiro Art Museum, Hokkaido (Japan).

"Though MORIYAMA's work has appeared in numerous exhibitions, photo journals and books, the exhibition in Japan was his first retrospective in Japan
(in 1999 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art organized a separate retrospective which toured the US and Europe).
This catalog book covers Daido MORIYAMA's nearly 40-year career chronologically -f rom his 1965 'Silent Theater' series to new work in the Shinjuku series
- through 240 vintage prints (nearly all black and white) and 80 books, magazines, posters, paintings and other materials." (© text: Japan's Metropolis magazine)

About the photographer,Daido MORIYAMA (b.1938 in Ikeda, prefecture Osaka, JP):
After training as a graphic designer and being stimulated to take an interest in the medium of photography by Takeji IWAMIYA, Daido MORIYAMA moved to Tokyo in 1961.
He had planned to apply for a post with the VIVO agency based there, whose chief initiators included the photographers Shomei TOMATSU and Eikoh HOSOE.
But as VIVO was at that time in the process of breaking up, MORIYAMA sought a different solution.

He had the opportunity of working with Eikoh HOSOE, where he was primarily responsible for the publication of photographs. As he confirmed in one of his own articles,
it is to HOSOE that he owed all the tools for his subsequent work.
After three years, in 1964, he resigned his post with his great role model, and went freelance.
From then on he produced countless shots taken in the cities of Japan, which he combed on foot, or, à la Jack Kerouac, by car 'on the road', always with his hand-held camera.
In rapid succession, the photographs bear witness to the virulent and unpredictable life of the streets, showing the contrasting mix of Asian-traditional and Western-modern,
as well as a world of new media and liberal attitudes that was penetrating everyday life.

The street-photographer MORIYAMA records all he encounters but pronounces no judgements; he looks into individual faces, sees geishas and street-girls, accompanies parades,
notices architectural features and façades in seemingly random juxtaposition, peers into private niches or looks at film posters, slogans and advertising logos with their promises.
While on the one hand the turbulence of civilization is reproduced, on the other Daido MORIYAMA also wrests from this very turbulence, time and again in still-lifes and
minute details as well as chiaroscuro depictions, calm, almost meditative moments.

If the imagery of Daido MORIYAMA’s photographs is brusque, contrasty, out-of-focus and grainy, this is due on the one hand to his rapid style of shooting,
often while he himself is moving, in which he often does not even look through the viewfinder, and on the other to his intensive work in the darkroom,
during which he experiences the motifs once more and seeks to condense them.

The shot of the Misawa 'Stray Dog' (1971) is as it were a symbol, chosen by Moriyama himself, of his own œuvre: border-crossing, uncommitted, instinctive and
highly attentive to atmosphere and detail. The act of taking a photograph as of post-processing can certainly be described as an existential necessity for Daido MORIYAMA,
to which he yields expansively and uncompromisingly.

Awards for Daido MORIYAMA:
1967 New Artist Award from the Japan Photo-Critics Association
1983 Annual Award from the Photographic Society of Japan
2003 The 44th Mainichi Art Award
2004 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh)
2019 Hasselblad Award

Selected Solo Exhibitions
1999 Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog, San Francisco MOMA, San Francisco; travelling to The Metropolitan Museum, Japan Society, New York City
2000 Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, travelling to Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
2001 Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, travelling to Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA
2002 Daido Moriyama: Shinjuku - Platform - Light & Shadow, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagoya, Japan
2003 Moriyama Daido 1965-2003, Shimane Art Museum, Shimane, Japan travelling to Kushiro Art Museum, Hokkaido, Japan, Kawasaki City Museum, Kawasaki, Japan
2003 Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris
2004 Daido Moriyama Colour prints and vintages, Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne, Germany
2006 Daido Moriyama, Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
2007 Daido Moriyama Retrospektive ab 1965, Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, Germany
2007 Daido Moriyama: Kyoku/Erotica, Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne
2007 Daido Moriyama Retrospectiva desde 1965, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Sevilla, Spain
2008 Daido Moriyama Retrospective 1965-2005 & Hawaii, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
2010 Visioni del Mondo, Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini, Modena, Italy
2011 On the Road, National Museum of Art, Osaka
2011 Daido Moriyama, Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne
2012 William Klein + Daido Moriyama, Tate Modern, London" (© text: Ferdinand Brüggemann)