The Art of Losing Love / Masahisa Fukase

 

The art of losing Love
Masahisa Fukase

It must be difficult to live with a photographer.

First, you must think you're eternally being spied upon, trying to be caught unawares, that an eye waiting to catch the true-true-you is always present, and always watching. It is only later that you realize that it isn't your essence that the photographer is trying to capture and distill truth from, it's theirs. That each image pointed at you is really just a sublimated view of themselves, and that what they project when they point and click in your general direction is really just a reflection back of self, sometimes twisted and sometimes upside-down.

Daido Moriyama Exhibition at the Steven Kasher Gallery

 

DAIDO MORIYAMA EXHIBITION AT THE STEVEN KASHER GALLERY

☛ 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.

 

Daido Moriyama

Moriyama Daidō: Photographer with the “Eyes of a Stray Dog”

Nov 29, 2017

Iizawa Kōtarō 

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.

Daido Moriyama / Fish Head

 

UNTITLED (FISH HEAD) BY DAIDO MORIYAMA (1978)

☛ 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 Moriyama

This 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.

Daido Moriyama Photographs

 

Stray Dog by Daido Moriyama

DAIDO MORIYAMA PHOTOGRAPHS

 “Stray Dog” by Daido Moriyama, Misawa, Aomori, 1971, gelatin silver print, 17 x 19 7/8in. Acquired by the SFMOMA in 1980. © 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)

'What you see is what you get' … Daido Moriyama's best photograph, Tights, 2011. Silver gelatin print 

Interview

Daido Moriyama's best photograph: my girlfriend's legs in fishnets

Interview by Sarah Phillips

'The calves press against the geometrical surface almost to the point of bursting, but the tension is balanced, making the legs very powerful'

Sarah Phillips
Wednesday 3 October 2012

O

ne day I was drinking coffee with my girlfriend when I caught a glimpse of her legs, which happened to be in stockings with fishnet tights over the top. I immediately started taking photographs.

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.

5 Lessons Daido Moriyama Has Taught Me About Street Photography

Daido Moriyama

5 Lessons Daido Moriyama Has Taught Me About Street Photography

by ERIC KIM on MARCH 27, 2013

I remember the first time I stumbled upon Daido Moriyama’s work via word-of-mouth by a friend. I remembered how my friend told me how he was a genius, and how incredible his black and white work was.

When I first looked at Daido’s work, I simply didn’t “get it.” His shots looked like a bunch of random and unintentional snapshots. The majority of Daido’s photos weren’t very interesting to me and seemed to be quite boring.

Daido Moriyama / Within the Shadows

 

DAIDO MORIYAMA

WITHIN THE SHADOWS