With over 200 works of art, 250 reproductions from publications, rare books and audiovisual projections, the exhibition offers a unique access to Moriyama's work and way of thinking.
A dog in the shadows. Its fur is shaggy, its mouth slightly open, its gaze suspicious. As harsh light brushes its back, parts of its face disappear into deep black. This photograph from 1971 became iconic—a turning point in the history of photography. It was taken by Daido Moriyama (born 1938 in Osaka, Japan), one of the most important figures in contemporary street photography. He challenged and expanded the visual language of photography, thereby opening up a new perspective on the world.
Moriyama became famous for his grainy, blurry, and skewed images, which offer a radically new perspective on social upheaval, longing, taboos, and the theater of everyday life. A trained graphic designer, he has been photographing life on the streets of Japan since the 1960s: passersby, urban scenes, fleeting moments. He found his subjects at a time when the country was undergoing rapid modernization following the devastation of World War II, not least from nuclear weapons. He documented the infiltration of Western consumer culture into mass media and advertising—his work is an elegy for a time of profound transformation. With his spontaneous photographs, Moriyama responded to the American occupation and to the contradictions and vitality of a society oscillating between grief and euphoria.
The retrospective traces Moriyama's photographic work and his conceptual engagements with media—from his early work for Japanese magazines and his growing distrust of photojournalism to his contribution to the Provoke movement. This development culminates in his radical photobook Farewell Photography (1972). In the early 1980s, Moriyama overcame a personal and creative crisis. His subsequent work developed a visual lyricism in which he reflected on his identity, memory, history, and the limits of photography. Many of these works were created for Japanese magazines and books, the very media that formed the central stage for photographic debates in postwar Japan. In addition to his signature black-and-white photographs, Moriyama also explored color and digital photography. The exhibition concludes with Record magazine , the culmination of his lifelong exploration – a publication Moriyama continues to produce to this day.
