After reading the passages in the book, "How I Take Photographs." and also looking intently at his work in the book, I grabbed a camera and headed over to the UT campus area to take some of my own photographs. His aesthetic is very much about the quick snapshot and I pushed myself to see quicker and photograph quicker.
It was a fun exercise. I also came to understand his idea that we can spend way too much time analyzing and dissecting snapshots and raising the anté around taking them. I see Garry Winogrand as the "American Moriyama" now. It's a liberating way of making images.
Shot here with an ancient Leica SL 601 camera and the Voigtlander Ultron 40mm lens.
The best images I think I've taken in many weeks.
14 comments:
Never trust photo reviewers or critics who can't show their own work!!! Thanks for setting a high standard.
R.A.
One of the "lessons" from that book, for me, was that if my attention was captured by something, I should make a photo of it. Not to mentally decide if it is a worthy subject, composition, etc. Just make the photo and move on.
-Hank
One thing seems clear in your posted work.
You like Girls.
Try and watch a YouTube video by Paulie B, “a day with NYC photographer Melissa O’Shaugnessy” She is very interesting, lots of wonderful examples, and a very very quick shooter.
To me the almost careless freedom of Moriyama's approach is very similar to William Klein. Now could be the time for you to acquire a Ricoh GR III Kirk - or better still the GR IIIX.
Love these Kirk. I have been bitten by the street photography bug, I find it incredibly satisfying to make a photo that captures ordinary life using gesture, colour and light.
Some of my favorite photographers are Alex Webb, his book The Suffering of Light is worth a look and some of the work by William Eggleston.
Gilly,
Let's not forget the inimitable Jay Maisel, who just happens to have a book entitled, "Light, Gesture & Color"!
Dick
Probably time to book that trip to Tokyo.
Just waiting on the passport renewal.
Thanks for the post. I find 60's/70's Japanese photography intriguing. It is perhaps antithetical to modern digital photography.
Hi Bill, Daido Moriyama is, I think, 84 or 85 years old now and still working!!! The book I referenced was published here in 2019 and I think, in Japan in 2016. So close to what he started doing in the late 1960s and early 1970s.... His vision and practice is so different from the mainstream... Love it.
he's done the most photobooks I think, over 100, beaten martin parr, there is a new one called "retrospective" just out that I have on order, published by prestel, someone else just published one of his that is entirely silkscreen printed, I think with white ink on black paper, also does a lot in editions of 350 with silkscreened cloth covers
He is beyond cool. I'm starting my own Daido Moriyama book collection. Rock on.
I think the exhibition linked to "retrospective" might end up touring, I don't know, it's in Berlin at the moment
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