Daido Moriyama

Born in 1938, Osaka, Japan. After working as an assistant under photographers Takeji Iwamiya and Eikoh Hosoe, Moriyama struck out on his own in 1964. His photographs were continuously featured in photography magazines. From 1968 to 70, he joined the legendry zine named “Provoke.” In the 60s and 70s, Moriyama caused waves in the Japanese photography scene with his high contrasted, coarse grained photographs, the essence of which is best captured in the expression “rough, slur, blur”. He never stopped questioning “What is photography?” and answered this question with the publication of two collections of his work in 1972- “good-bye photograph (Shashin-yo-Sayounara)” and “Hunter (Kariudo)”, both being radical explorations of the topic at hand. However, by publishing both books, Moriyama found that his photography had become too conceptual and slid into a slump. Later on, Moriyama started serializing his work in a new magazine named “generation of photograph (Shashin-jidai, 1980-)” , breaking new ground for his mindset towards photography.

Award
2004 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh)
2003 The 44th Mainichi Art Award
1983 Photographer of the Year Award from the Photographic Society of Japan
1967 New Artist Award from the Japan Photo-Critics Association

Collection – international
MAlbertina Museum, Vienna
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh)
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris
Fotomuseum Wintherthur, Zurich
Kunsthaus Zurich
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Princeton University
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Selvaag Photo Collection
Shimane Art Musem
The Centre Pompidou, Paris
the Getty
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Center of Photography Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics

Collection – in Japan
Chichu Art Museum, Kagawa
Fukui Art Museum
Kawasaki City Museum
Kushiro Art Museum, Hokkaido
Miyagi Museum of Art
Nihon University
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
Yamaguchi Prefectural Museum of Art
Yokohama Museum of Art

Galleries
Aiko Nagasawa, Tokyo
Taka Ishi Gallery, Tokyo