Daidō Moriyama Memory of Dog 2 – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘William Klein + Daido Moriyama’ at the Tate Modern, London

Exhibition dates: 10th October 2012 – 20th January 2013

William Klein (French born America, b. 1928)
Candy Store, New York
1955
Gelatin silver print
© William Klein

More Daido Moriyama photographs can be found on my 2012 posting Fracture: Daido Moriyama at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and 2009 posting Daido Moriyama: Tokyo Photographs at Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Tate Modern for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

William Klein (French born America, b. 1928)
Pray + Sin, New York
1954
Gelatin silver print
© William Klein

With work from the 1950s to the present day, the exhibition demonstrates the visual affinity between their urgent, blurred and grainy style of photography and also their shared desire to convey street life and political protest, from anti-war demonstrations and gay pride marches to the effects of globalisation and urban deprivation.

The exhibition also considers the medium and dissemination of photography itself, exploring the central role of the photo-book in avant-garde photography and the pioneering use of graphic design within these publications. As well the issues of Provoke magazine in which Moriyama and his contemporaries showcased their work, the exhibition will include fashion photography from Klein’s work with Vogue and installations relating to his satirical films Mister Freedom and Who Are You Polly Maggoo?

Text from the Tate Modern website

William Klein (French born America, b. 1928)
Bikini, Moscow
1959
Gelatin silver print
© William Klein

William Klein (French born America, b. 1928)
Piazza di Spagna, Rome
1960
Gelatin silver print
© William Klein

William Klein (French born America, b. 1928)
Gun 1, New York
1955
Gelatin silver print
© William Klein

William Klein (French born America, b. 1928)
lsa Maxwell’s Toy ball, Waldorf Hotel, New York
1955
Gelatin silver print
© William Klein

William Klein (French born America, b. 1928)
Kiev railway station, Moscow
1959
Gelatin silver print
© William Klein

William Klein (French born America, b. 1928)
School out, Dakar
1963
Gelatin silver print
© William Klein

William Klein (French born America, b. 1928)
Dance Happening in Ginza, Tokyo
1961
Gelatin silver print
© William Klein

William Klein + Daidō Moriyama Exhibition Tate Modern, London

Slideshow of images from the press view at the William Klein / Daido Moriyama Exhibition at Tate Modern, London

Explore modern urban life in New York and Tokyo through the photographs of William Klein and Daido Moriyama. This is the first exhibition to look at the relationship between the work of influential photographer and filmmaker Klein, and that of Moriyama, the most celebrated photographer to emerge from the Japanese Provoke movement of the 1960s. With work from the 1950s to the present day, the exhibition demonstrates the visual affinity between their urgent, blurred and grainy style of photography and also their shared desire to convey street life and political protest, from anti-war demonstrations and gay pride marches to the effects of globalisation and urban deprivation. Taking as its central theme the cities of New York and Tokyo, William Klein + Daido Moriyama explores both artists’ celebrated depictions of modern urban life.

The exhibition is formed of two retrospectives side by side, bringing together over 300 works, including vintage prints, contact sheets, film stills, photographic installations and archival material. The influence of Klein’s seminal 1956 publication Life is Good & Good for You in New York, Trance Witness Revels, as well as his later books Tokyo 1964 and Rome: The City and Its People 1959, is traced through Moriyama’s radical depictions of post-war Tokyo in Sayonara Photography and The Hunter 1972. The juxtaposition of these artists not only demonstrates the visual affinity between their urgent, blurred and grainy style of photography, but also their shared desire to convey street life and political protest, from anti-war demonstrations and student protests to the effects of globalisation and urban deprivation.

This exhibition also considers the medium and dissemination of photography itself, exploring the central role of the photo-book in avant-garde photography and the pioneering use of graphic design within these publications. As well the issues of Provoke magazine in which Moriyama and his contemporaries showcased their work, the exhibition includes fashion photography from Klein’s work with Vogue and installations relating to his satirical films Mister Freedom and Who Are You Polly Maggoo? New ways of presenting photography are also demonstrated by Moriyama’s installation Polaroid/Polaroid 1997, which recreates his studio interior through a meticulous arrangement of Polaroid images.

Press release from the Tate Modern website

William Klein + Daido Moriyama exhibition banner

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Misawa
1971
Gelatin silver print
© Daido Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Marine Accident (Premeditated or not 5)
1969
Gelatin silver print
© Daido Moriyama

William Klein + Daido Moriyama is the first exhibition to examine the relationship between the work of William Klein (born 1928), one of the twentieth century’s most important photographers and film-makers, and that of Daido Moriyama (born 1938), the most celebrated photographer to emerge from the Japanese Provoke movement. Taking as its central theme the cities of New York and Tokyo, William Klein + Daido Moriyama explores both artists’ celebrated depictions of modern urban life.

The exhibition is formed of two retrospectives side by side, bringing together over 300 works, including vintage prints, contact sheets, film stills, photographic installations and archival material. The influence of Klein’s seminal 1956 publication Life is Good & Good for You in New York, Trance Witness Revels, as well as his later books Tokyo 1964 and Rome: The City and Its People 1959, is traced through Moriyama’s radical depictions of post-war Tokyo in Sayonara Photography and The Hunter 1972. The juxtaposition of these artists not only demonstrates the visual affinity between their urgent, blurred and grainy style of photography, but also their shared desire to convey street life and political protest, from anti-war demonstrations and student protests to the effects of globalisation and urban deprivation.

William Klein was born in New York, USA in 1928 and now lives and works in Paris, France. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh and he received the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award at the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards.

Daido Moriyama was born in Osaka, Japan in 1938 and moved to Tokyo in 1961, where he continues to live and work. He was recently given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Centre of Photography and his work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Cartier Foundation, Paris; and The National Museum of Art, Osaka.

William Klein + Daido Moriyama is co-curated by Simon Baker, Curator of Photography and International Art, Tate, and Juliet Bingham, Curator, Tate Modern, with Kasia Redzisz, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The exhibition is accompanied by new books about both photographers from Tate Publishing. A season of film screenings at Tate Modern is also being held to coincide with the exhibition, showing Klein’s feature films and documentaries.

Press release from the Tate Modern website

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, born 1938)
Memory of Dog 2
1981
Gelatin silver print
© Daido Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, born 1938)
Tokyo color
2008-2015
© Daido Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Tokyo
2011
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation
© Daido Moriyama

After reading Jack Kerouac’s classic beat novel On The Road, Moriyama began photographing the roads leading into and out of Japanese towns. Instead of places people live in and feel comfortable with, he portrays cities primarily as destinations to be visited and left behind. The resulting book, Hunter (1972), is described as a “road map of images from all over Japan through a moving car window. Routes and roads are the hunting field for me as a photographer.”

Occasionally he finds beauty – in snowflakes falling, a train speeding past, or the patterning of fishnet tights or perforated steel – but ramping up the contrast of his black and white prints, Moriyama more often portrays the world as a dangerous place engulfed in existential darkness.

In all this chaos, his studio appears like a beacon of calm and stability. Recorded in a grid of polaroid shots, the room is recreated as an installation that offers a rare glimpse of clarity and colour in what can otherwise feel like a miasma – the world as seen through a dark fog.

While Klein undoubtedly influenced Moriyama’s love of grainy, out-of-focus shots taken from odd angles, to pair him with the American tells only half the story. Warhol was equally important as the inspiration behind his Accident series, which includes car crashes, shipping disasters, executions and a health scare linked to overcrowded beaches. Moriyama’s use of found images (the car crashes come from posters), his fascination with serialisation (banks of tins on supermarket shelves) and with juxtaposing unrelated images on a page were also inspired by Warhol. So pairing him with Klein is interesting, but doesn’t do him justice. Moriyama deserves to be seen as a law unto himself, rather than an acolyte of a more familiar western photographer.

Sarah Kent. “William Klein + Daido Moriyama, Tate Modern,” on The Arts Desk website Thursday, 11 October 2012 [Online] Cited 05/09/2022

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Midnight
1986
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation
© Daido Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Another Country in New York
1971
Gelatin silver print
Tokyo Polytechnic University
© Daido Moriyama

Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG

Opening hours:
Monday to Sunday 10.00 – 18.00

Tate Modern website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Daidō Moriyama: Tokyo Photographs’ at Philadelphia Museum of Art

Exhibition dates: 28th February 2009 – 31st July 2009

Curator: Peter Barberie, Curator of Photographs

Many thankx to Philadelphia Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled from the series Memory of Dog
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 8 1/16 × 11 13/16 inches (20.5 × 30cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
Philadelphia Museum of Art
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama often calls himself a “stray dog,” a reference to one of his iconic early pictures of a roaming mongrel, but also to his preferred incidental vantage points in relation to his subjects and his beguiled yet wary stance toward modernising Japanese society. In the series Memory of Dog, he revisited photographic scenarios and motifs from his previous two decades of work, overlaying his peripheral approach with another quality that he finds crucial to photography: its relationship to memory.

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled (Rose)
1984
Gelatin silver print
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Viaduct 1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo
1981
Gelatin silver print
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled (Bottle) from the series Light and Shadow
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 13/16 x 11 13/16 inches (19.8 x 30cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama is one of the most important and exciting Japanese photographers of our time, having made prolific, often experimental pictures of modern urban life since the 1960s. This exhibition showcases a group of approximately 45 photographs made in and around Tokyo in the 1980s, when Moriyama focused his mature aesthetic on the city with renewed intensity.

Moriyama approaches the world with an equalising eye, capturing disparate peripheral details that in themselves account for little, but together add up to a powerful diagnosis of modern experience. In 1980s Japan such details encompassed the disorienting and sometimes brutal juxtaposition of traditional culture and modernisation, most visible in the glut of consumer goods and images. But in Moriyama’s photographs these subjects appear alongside the banal elements of any streetscape: a derelict patch of pavement and wall, a car with an aggressive key scratch running its full length, even a single rose blossom.

Moriyama’s urban imagery shares some of its qualities with other great street photography of the 20th century, and he has cited the photographs of William Klein as a major influence. But his work involves strong responses to a wide range of modern art and literature, including photographs and graphic designs by many of his Japanese contemporaries, Andy Warhol’s silkscreens, and the novels of Jack Kerouac and James Baldwin. Moriyama’s mix of international and Japanese trends to represent modern Tokyo is one source of his photography’s power, and the exhibition will include a small number of works by other artists to demonstrate his visual sensibility, including prints and photographs by Warhol, Klein, Shomei Tomatsu, and Tadanori Yokoo.

Text from the Philadelphia Museum of Art website

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled
c. 1981-1985
Gelatin silver print
Image: 8 1/4 x 11 7/8 inches (21 x 30.2cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled from the series Light and Shadow
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 3/4 x 11 13/16 inches (19.7 x 30cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
On the Road (Chair) from the series Light and Shadow
1981
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 3/4 x 11 13/16 inches (19.7 x 30cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Since the 1960s Japanese photographer Daidō Moriyama (born 1938) has been making dynamic, often experimental images of modern urban life, establishing a reputation as one of the most important and exciting photographers of our time. The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present an exhibition of approximately 45 photographs by Moriyama, made in and around Tokyo in the 1980s, when the artist focused his mature aesthetic on the city with renewed intensity. The exhibition will be on view from February 28-June 30, 2009 in the Julien Levy Gallery at the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building.

Born in 1938 in Ikeda-cho (now Ikeda-shi), Osaka, Moriyama witnessed the dramatic changes that swept over Japan in the decades following World War II. After his father’s death in a train accident, he began working as a freelance graphic designer at age 20. He was intrigued by the graphic possibilities of screenprinting, the cheapest and most prolific form for printed imagery, and by international trends in contemporary art. These interests, along with attention to the various forms of visual stimuli that populate the urban landscape have been a hallmark of Moriyama’s career.

In 1960 Moriyama took up the study of photography under Takeji Iwamiya and one year later moved to Tokyo hoping to join the eminent photographers’ group VIVO, a short-lived cooperative whose members were exploring and confronting the revolution in modern Japanese society in their work. Although VIVO disbanded a week after Moriyama’s arrival in the capital, the visual and existential turmoil they explored would become one of the core subjects in Moriyama’s photographs. His gritty, black and white images of streets and highways express the conflicting realities of contemporary Japan, the disorienting and sometimes brutal juxtaposition of traditional culture and modernisation.

“It is a pleasure to present this group of photographs from the Museum’s collection reflecting the distinctive vision of Daidō Moriyama, who is undoubtedly among the great urban photographers of the 20th century,” Curator of Photographs Peter Barberie said. “These particular images focus on the visual experience of modern-day Tokyo, but through them Moriyama is documenting broader global trends of modernisation, and at the same time exploring the unique aesthetic qualities of his medium.”

His early images from the 1960s and 70s tested the notion of photographic artistry in an extreme fashion. He chose seemingly arbitrary subjects, and experimented with motion and overexposure to create blurred or nearly blank images, adopting an anti-aesthetic position. Other Japanese photographers were also working in this vein, but Moriyama’s 1972 book Bye Bye Photography became the defining statement of this particular style. The later photographs presented in this exhibition are generally sharper in focus but maintain the peripheral vantage point that Moriyama so often employed, as well as the seemingly random content. His images capture with an equalising eye the kinds of disparate peripheral details that litter the modern urban experience: shadows, cars, and abandoned corners, as well as the glut of consumer goods and commodities.

Profoundly influenced by Japanese photographers Eikoh Hosoe and Shomei Tomatsu, Moriyama’s vision was also enriched by his acquaintance with the work of American photographers William Klein and Robert Frank. Like them he practiced a new, more action-oriented street photography. His images are often out of focus, vertiginously tilted, or invasively cropped.

His work also involves strong responses to a wide range of modern art and literature, including photographs and graphic designs by many of his Japanese contemporaries, Andy Warhol’s silkscreens, and the novels of Jack Kerouac and James Baldwin. The exhibition will include a small number of works by other artists to demonstrate his visual sensibility, including prints and photographs by Warhol, Klein, Shomei Tomatsu, and Tadanori Yokoo.

Press release from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Tunnel
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 15/16 x 11 7/8 inches (20.2 x 30.2cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled from the series Light and Shadow
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 3/4 × 11 3/4 inches (19.7 × 29.8cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled
c. 1981-1985
Gelatin silver print
Image: 8 3/8 × 11 5/8 inches (21.2 × 29.6cm)
Sheet: 10 × 11 15/16 inches (25.4 × 30.4cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled, from the series Light and Shadow
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 3/4 x 11 13/16 inches (19.7 x 30cm)
Sheet: 10 x 12 1/8 inches (25.4 x 30.8cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama