Daido Moriyama

Daido Moriyama is a pioneering Japanese photographer renowned for his raw, gritty and provocative depictions of urban life. His work captures the frenetic energy and fragmented experiences of post-war Japan, particularly in Tokyo. Moriyama’s distinctive style — marked by high-contrast black-and-white images, grainy textures and unconventional compositions — has made him one of the most influential figures in contemporary photography.

Moriyama was born in 1938 in Osaka, Japan. He began his career as an assistant to photographer Eikoh Hosoe and created his first photobook Japan: A Photo Theater in 1968. Inspired by Hosoe, Eugène Atget, Weegee and William Klein, Moriyama captured modern life in cosmopolitan cities, establishing himself as a celebrated street photographer. Shot mostly with a handheld automatic camera, often without looking into the viewfinder, Moriyama’s photography conveys a sense of candid spontaneity of everyday life.

He gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, working largely with the theme of the post-war reconstruction in Japan. Known to experiment with and challenge the representational possibilities of the photographic medium, Moriyama’s 1972 photobook Farewell Photography marked a radical departure from traditional conventions. In this collection, he embraced a chaotic, almost abstract approach, using blurred, overexposed and distorted images to challenge the boundaries of photography. This seminal work exemplifies Moriyama’s intent to deconstruct visual norms and reflect the fragmented reality of modern life.

While best-known for his monochrome photography, Moriyama has also ventured into colour photography since the 1970s. Since the late 2000s, he has turned to the digital format, which enables him to take a large number of shots when out photographing. ‘Take photographs — of anything and everything, whatever catches your eye. Don’t pause to think,’ he said.

Daido Moriyama’s work has been exhibited widely in Japan and internationally, and can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and more.