| Tights, 2011. Silver gelatin print Photo by Daido Moriyama |
This picture was taken in 1986, and what you see is what you get. The shoot was quite natural: I asked my girlfriend to make an occasional pose, but didn't particularly direct her. I tend not to have feelings or thoughts while I work: I am completely immersed in the visual world of the subject.
☛ Steven Kasher Gallery: “Record No. 18”, Taipei, 2010, gelatin silver, printed 2013, 16 x 22 in (40.6 x 55.9 cm).
Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama took this picture nearly 40 years after he shot one of his most famous portrait, that of a stray dog in Misawa (in january of 1971). In both case, the picture was created at the animal’s level, instead of adopting a high-angle shot (i.e. looking down on the animals). The young cat also seems to testify of a strong thematic continuity in Moriyama’s work.
| Heading into the Tate Modern exhibition. |
| Daido Moriyama |
Moriyama Daidō wanders the streets like a stray dog, taking snapshots that leave vivid impressions on viewers. He is mentioned with the likes of Araki Nobuyoshi as one of Japan’s contemporary master photographers.Exhibits by modern Japanese photographers have become common at art museums and galleries in all parts of the world since the 1990s. Moriyama Daidō stands alongside Araki Nobuyoshi as one of the most popular artists featured in these shows. Recent years have seen a number of large-scale Moriyama exhibitions, including a two-man exhibition with William Klein at the Tate Modern in London in 2012 and a one-man show, “Daidō Tokyo,” at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris.
☛ Tepper Takayama Fine Arts: Untitled (Fish Head) by Daido Moriyama, Tsugaru Straits, gelatin silver print on fibre paper, 11″ x 14″, 1978. Hi-res reproduction retrieved from Foam. © Daido MoriyamaThis image is also reproduced in the catalog assembled on behalf of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain: Daido Moriyama, photographs by Daido Moriyama, text by Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama, London: Thames & Hudson 2003, p. 34. The hi-res reproduction shown above was scanned from this book where the head is shown facing down. I did however kept the orientation shown over at the Tepper Takayama Fine Arts website, with the head facing right.
| Stray Dog by Daido Moriyama |
From the essay “Dealing with a stray dog” by Akira Hasegawa comes a first-hand account, by Daido Moriyama himself, of how this photo was taken:
The photograph first appeared as a single image within the series Nanika he no Tabi (En Route to Something) in the March 1971 issue of Asahi Camera. As Moriyama himself recalls, “right after New Year 1971, I took a picture of a stray dog in Misawa up north in Aomori where there was a US military base. I was heading out in the morning with my camera in hand and took one step out of the hotel, when right there in front of me was this stray dog wandering around sunning himself. Just like that I pointed my lens at the stray dog and clicked the shutter a few times; later on, his moment in the light was printed as a full spread for a photo magazine series I was doing at the time”. As simple as that. Yet, now that same photograph “catches the eye of photography fans and somehow remains a favourite in Japan and around the world. It’s become a print that wanders around between museums and galleries and private collectors” (from an Asahi Shimbun newspaper essay by Moriyama). A turn of events the young photographer could never have imagined. (the essay “Dealing with a stray dog” is published in the book The World through My Eyes by Daido Moriyama, Milano: Skira, 2010, p. 17)
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Most of my work, whether shot in Japan or abroad, is made on the street. I like to photograph the cities I visit and the people I encounter there. One of my best-known images, a shot of a stray dog taken in 1971, is an example of the kind of thing that catches my eye. But sometimes I want to shoot more erotically charged scenes, such as a woman in tights, or a woman's lips.