Daido Moriyama Gallery Visit:

On Thursday, January 25th, our Photography in London class visited the Daido Moriyama Photographers Gallery Exhibition. Although I previously only knew his work on a very surface level, I really enjoyed my visit. After perusing the galleries Moriyama’s mastery of spontaneity and rawness became acutely obvious in his frames. The photographs and ideas were cohesive; however, it seemed completely on the fly, like random facets of someone’s life. I felt like that was the only unifier of his work.

The first photo I chose is a diptych by Moriyama that is part of a “Hybrid Culture” series. The photo is entirely in black and white. One side shows a slightly tilted framing of a Japanese man, shirtless, in what looks like makeup. The other half is a photo of some sort of object featuring a cartoon mouth with its tongue out; similar to the Rolling Stones Motif. The contrast here is very obvious as one is a portrait and the other is a horizontal composition, the two seem to clash visually in every way. Color is their only unifier. Despite being a diptych there is still this rushed essence in the photos. The off-kilter appearance of the portrait makes it seem less calculated, and the mouth could be a test shot for a roll of film. I see the diptych as connected in shape by way of the mouths.Thinking about the series name this photo could imply a number of things. Personally, the portrait reminds me of a Kabuki performance; traditional Japanese theater. The one on the right seems reminiscent of Rock and Roll, a large cultural import to Japan from the United States in the 1960s. Working with this, Moriyama potentially is meditating on Japan’s past musical/theater traditions meeting with their contemporary versions.

The second work titled, “Labyrinth” appears as Moriyama’s contact sheet from a roll of film, except the gallery noted that, “Rather than offering a treasure map of his career, Moriyama presents a multi-faceted labyrinth by shuffling his film strips, disrupting the original sequences. The erratic mixing of times and places resembles the way he perceives his own life story and memories, in contrast to a linear, chronological convention.” I really enjoyed this specific image from the series as it seemed to tell a story of an encounter through these “memories” rather than a roll of film. They are various rows of what looks like the same scene from different perspectives. Like the first image they are once again entirely in black & white, which further creates a uniform scene. As the viewer one can look at the images and deduce some sort of eroticism from the subject matter– a female figure, skin, fishnet, and a lit cigarette. This seems like an intimate memory from Moriyama’s past, where we can see everything except the woman herself. The photo forces one to imagine the rest of the scene; it is not entirely spelled out. It seems like line joins these photos together through the grid-like pattern of the contact sheet. If anything these photos remind me strongly of contemporary Japanese photographer, Shin Noguchi, and perhaps Diane Arbus too. Even in the “Labyrinth” series, despite it being what appears to be a specific scene, all the photos seem instinctive rather than planned. The camera is an afterthought, a mere sidekick.

Daido Moriyama, 'Ecology of Japan 5: Hybrid Culture', Asahi Camera magazine, May 1968

Daido Moriyama, “Labyrinth”, 2012