Photo Elysée presents a retrospective of one of Japan’s greatest photographers, Daido Moriyama. A native of Osaka, a wanderer of Tokyo and the archipelago, the artist has continuously captured the conflict between Japanese tradition and Western influences.
This impressive exhibition, produced by the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) in Sao Paulo, Brazil, stops in the arts district of Lausanne after Berlin, London, and Helsinki. Organized in collaboration with the Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation, it represents one of the largest explorations of the work of the Japanese artist, born on October 10, 1938, in Ikeda, near Osaka, marking over 60 years of artistic career.
“It is impossible to talk about the history of photography without mentioning him. And in Japan, he is a cult artist. His work is very dense. He has desacralized the precious photographic print, favoring a way of living photography rather than an artistic posture. Photography is his way of life,” explained Nathalie Herschdorfer, the museum’s director, on Thursday.
Blurry and Grainy Images
“He is not a niche photographer. He has viewed photography as a democratic language promoted by mass media – newspapers, magazines, and widely circulated commercial publications – exploring the reproducibility of images, their dissemination, and consumption,” continued Thyago Nogueira, head of the contemporary photography department at IMS and organizer of this retrospective. He has also published over 500 books.
“His work and aesthetic are unique, famous notably for his blurry and grainy images, full of energy and dynamism,” he highlighted. He has often placed his image archives in new contexts, playing with enlargements, cropings, and image resolution.
Photojournalism, portraits, street scenes, captured candidly, in black and white, very close to or distant from his subjects, precise, linear, well-framed and organized, then increasingly spontaneous, fragmented or even chaotic, in colors, blurry, Daido Moriyama has constantly questioned the very nature of photography, its role, its relationship to the press, to art, its uses, and multiple lives.
Witness to Evolving Morals
Daido Moriyama, soon to be 86 years old, grew up in post-war Japan. After its capitulation at the end of World War II, the country underwent American military occupation, leading to rapid westernization and disrupting its economy. During these decades of imposed changes, the photographer became a witness to the evolution of morals in Japan during the second half of the 20th century.
He used his camera to document his immediate environment and to visually explore this shaken Japanese society, bringing to life a nascent consumer society. For this work, he was inspired by American artists such as Andy Warhol and William Klein.
After deconstructing the photographic medium in “Farewell Photography” (1972), he went through a personal and artistic crisis. His work then acquired a “visual lyricism” through which he reflected on his identity, the essence of photography, memory, and history.
During this period, he regained interest in street photography and traveled hundreds of kilometers through Tokyo, across the archipelago, as well as to New York, Paris, and London. The spirit of Jack Kerouac hovers over certain series of photos “on the road”.
“Pretty Woman”
The public will also see in its entirety the monthly series over twelve months, entitled “Accident, Premeditated or not,” published at the time in Asahi Camera magazine. For a year, Daido Moriyama studied how accidents and news events are portrayed in the press. He addresses, among other things, the perception of the passage of time, the exploitation of human existence’s vulnerability, sensationalism, and the contradictions of photojournalism, according to Thyago Nogueira.
Also noteworthy is the colorful series “Pretty Woman,” which addresses “the progressive seductive nature of advertising images and the fetishism of capitalist society.” A stunning mosaic.
At Photo Elysée, the public is immersed in a multidimensional panorama of Japanese society. Grandiose and abundant with hundreds and hundreds of photos, the exhibition is both highly aesthetic, electric, hypnotic, provocative, reflective, questioning, wild, and contemplative.
On view until February 23, 2025.