Audioguide to the Daido Moriyama's exhibition
Recorder of desires and fleeting moments
Daido Moriyama is one of Japan’s most famous photographic artists, if not the most famous. During his career of nearly sixty years, his work has influenced the way we look at photographs. Moriyama sees the world as an erotic scene through which he travels guided by his senses, camera always ready to catch fleeting moments. However, according to Moriyama, the eroticism of the human world does not manifest in an apparent way. He rather discusses desire and the way desire is a fundamental element in human existence. Especially cities as embodiments of human desires have been a driving force in Moriyama’s work. As he walks the city streets, he seeks his own desires, all the while recording moments in time. Moriyama has even remarked that he is addicted to cities and that he could not photograph anything without the existence of cities.
Moriyama is particularly known for his grainy and blurry black-and-white images. According to Moriyama, these works have a strong presence of symbolism and abstraction. Moriyama has stated that black-and-white images spark an instinctive physical reaction in his body. Moriyama considers color photos problematic in that the images themselves make choices independently from the viewer, which is why he feels that there is something vulgar about color photos. The exhibition on display in the Finnish Museum of Photography is almost entirely composed of black-and-white images.
The Moriyama retrospective exhibition in the Finnish Museum of Photography K1 in spring 2024 is built around Moriyama’s photo books that he considers the most important expressive medium for his images. This is why he does not highlight the importance of his individual photos as artworks. The different sections in the exhibition consist of ensembles curated from Moriyama’s photo books.
At the beginning of his career, Moriyama explored ways to depict cultural transformations through photography. He also wanted to understand the role of photographs in instigating cultural transformation and possibly even revolution. Ensembles displayed at the beginning of the exhibition portray the influx of American culture into occupied Japan, the significance of recording fleeting moments on his travels, and the fickle nature of human existence.
Crisis, insignificance and catharsis
In the 1970s, Moriyama experienced a significant crisis with photography. In his own words, he started hating photography that aspired to a sort of spiritual harmony. Moriyama thinks that photographs of this kind do not question the nature of photography, and therefore reality is not present in them.
Moriyama’s personal crisis culminated in the publication of the Farewell Photography photo book. He has stated that at the time he was young and disappointed in the way things were around him. This is why many things felt wrong, especially regarding photography. Moriyama was constantly irritated and harrowed by questions on what photography is and why he does it.
The photo book Farewell Photography consists of scraps of film and shots discarded by Moriyama and his friends. Moriyama contemplated the discarded snippets on the darkroom floor and asked himself, “Why are these lying around on the floor? They are also pictures of the world, so why not use them?” This simple inspiration was not only the basis for Farewell Photography; it also made Moriyama realize that anything is possible in photography.
Many in Japan have an idea of home as one’s birthplace where one grows up and where everyone is always there. For Moriyama, this is a foreign idea, as his family was constantly on the move. Moriyama describes his work as a way of creating a home for himself by combining things produced by his imagination with things he saw as a child. He wishes the viewers would examine their own memories while looking at his photos.
To the city, with love
Memory plays an essential part when Moriyama discusses why he is attracted to photography. He has stated that the most important purpose of a photograph is to form a link between the photographer’s and the viewer’s memories. Moriyama emphasizes that even though a photo belongs to the photographer when it is being taken, it ceases to be so when the photo is put on display. Once a photo is exhibited, the viewer has free rein to see and feel whatever they wish, making it their own.
For Moriyama, the camera is a copy machine that allows him to stop time. He considers this attribute unique to the camera, because it allows the photographer to make the world stand still and to remember and record that specific moment. These moments captured in photographs have the ability to stir a feeling that allows the viewer to return to certain memories of places.
The significance of memory and recorded fragments of time in Moriyama’s work is illustrated excellently in the ensembles Light and Shadow and Labyrinth. In these works, Moriyama explores the relationship of past and present by contemplating on his own relationship with his father, the angst of youth, US army bases, and the fickleness of memories related to everyday moments and places. Moriyama is not reaching for nostalgia, but a feeling that arises at a moment when the images formed inside of one’s head collide with scenes from the outside world. Moriyama has stated that these are the moments he has been recording on his long walks for over fifty-five years. Ever since he was young, Moriyama has loved walking in cities, from high streets to dark alleys and shady corners.
Moriyama’s friends have asked whether he ever grows tired of walking and photographing the same hoods. His answer is simple: never. Moriyama has declared that even though he has photographed cities for almost sixty years, he can never see them through an old man’s eyes, understanding everything. For no matter how old they are, humans always have desires. Those desires will of course change in quality and quantity with age, but they will nevertheless always be real and present. For Moriyama, photography is a means to express these desires, which means that there will always be new experiences and feelings stirred by fleeting moments that can be recorded. Record, the final installation in the Finnish Museum of Photography exhibition, illustrates this approach. Record is an independent magazine that Moriyama already buried once in the 1970s and brought it back to life in the early 2000s. It is a diary of sorts that Moriyama uses to challenge both himself and photography. Most of all it is Moriyama’s love letter to cities, the places without which he could not photograph anything.
