Daido Moriyama

Hi everyone, sorry it took me so long to post on here . . .

Anyway, in late February, I went to the Luhring Augustine Gallery on 24th Street in Chelsea to see the Daido Moriyama exhibit. Moriyama is a post-World War II Japanese photographer that photographed and developed with extremely high contrast, popping grain tremendously to often create a lifeless, ominous feeling. The shadows his subjects create are often true black, and coalesce with the subject to morph it into a unique, unidentifiable figure.

The exhibit was divided into two parts. The front and larger of the two rooms displayed Moriyama’s photos from a trip to Hawaii. The second room displayed smaller-scale versions of his past work. At first I thought the front “vacation” portion was a bit strange -- strange that he would display vacation pictures that contained images of typical Hawaiian tourist photos of volcanoes, airplanes, palm trees, pig roasts and the like. However when I came back to this part of the show, I viewed the photographs more objectively, and really started to appreciate them for what they were and how they were presented. The reasons why I initially disliked them was most likely why Moriyama had taken them. He wanted to take trite, typical vacation pictures and present them through his unique lens. Hawaii is obviously a popular relaxation spot, but after Moriyama processes his images, they seem to take place on some eerie, lifeless planet. The refreshing surf becomes thick oil. The sand becomes a featureless concrete floor. Palm trees look like nothing you’ve ever seen before. (Of course, this is to exclude one piece I think kind of ruined the set . . . a dog with sunglasses on and money hanging out of his mouth . . . just didn’t do it for me...)

My favorite pieces were in the back room. Purely out of interest and not really attributing to technical ability, I really loved his transportation shots (including one or two in the front as well). I think Moriyama has a love for graphic design, as his photographs of signs and text suggest. The image of the streetlight against the texture of the ocean is, I believe, a great example of his style. Moriyama loves taking the typical, and morphing it towards the realm of unrecognizable. He isolates the common object, occurrence, landscape, etc., and alters it in a way that we see it from a completely new perspective. Grains pop where smoothness belongs, sense of day and night is completely removed, and small features that give character to the subject are blown out by the contrast to create a sense of shape, as opposed to unique object.

I definitely liked his photographs that he shot in Japan the most. It is obvious to me that he feels most comfortable here, and has a strong sense of unity with his subject matter. He appears to focus on culture and personal interactions, and present them from an almost post-apocolyptic point of view.

Something from the gallery's website:

http://www.luhringaugustine.com/index.php?mode=past&object_id=227