daido-eng

DAIDO MORIYAMA by NWU Nagatani Lab.

【A】　A Photo Theater (1968)

My first impression of this collection was, “They’re glaring at me.” If I put myself in the position of the person being photographed, a glare would mean they didn’t want to be photographed—it was a nuisance. In Japanese, “toru” can mean to photograph, to take, or even to steal. A shutter cuts out time; along with the figure it captures, it also records the feelings of not wanting to be taken, not wanting to be seen. Through the medium of photography, this seemed to connect with the state of the individual and society today. I would like this exhibition to be an opportunity to consider what it means to place oneself both as the one who photographs and the one who is photographed. (Urata.K)

【B・F】　Hunter (1972)

Walking and casually clicking the shutter—snap, snap—fragments of the city are cut out. Within the monochrome, images of women of the time stand out clearly, and yet somehow hazily. From that presence, I became aware of the perspective of the “taker” on the other side of the lens. I imagine Moriyama himself was overwhelmed by the female figures as they emerged in the developer. Focusing on the women who appear in A Hunter, I structured this section by reading their presence and the sense of distance as a key. (Yoshiyama.K)

【C・H】　Farewell Photography (1972)

【C】 In Farewell Photography, through operations such as duplication, reversal, converting color to monochrome, and the use of strong strobe, the images of the subjects become ambiguous and attenuated. Many photographs are even indecipherable as to what they depict. That is precisely why they are fascinating—and why they make us think. What is photography? What are the elements that make a photograph a photograph? I chose these works as a starting point to face those questions. (K・S)

【H】 While looking at Daido Moriyama’s photographs, what stuck with me were the film-like frames that appear from time to time. The things being photographed—people, landscapes—are varied, yet those frames suddenly surface, and simply lining them up makes them feel like a continuous scene from a movie. Mere accidental film sprocket holes become something that stirs the imagination.
From there I arrived at the idea of “inside and outside the frame,” and conceived an installation in which there is an even larger frame outside the single photograph’s frame. (A・S)

【D・E】　Light and Shadow (1982)

【D】 The photographs in Light and Shadow are like copies of instants from human memory and experience—moments that are not swayed by shifting value systems. A hat shaped from thick cloth is likely for autumn and winter; from the era, we can imagine its owner was a man of a certain age. Though it may not be purely utilitarian, the hat surely had a special role.
My father always wore a hat when he went out to cover a surgical scar on his head. When he came home, he would place it with a soft thud on the desk, sigh, and slowly sit down. It feels as if that scene from more than ten years ago has been copied here. (Takahashi.K)

【E】 This work is produced in reference to Light and Shadow. As I looked through Light and Shadow, I naturally began to think about Moriyama’s condition at the time of shooting. From the text on the book band and the photographs, I inferred a state in which “the world appears crystal clear, and the shapes and textures of things are emphasized—heightened sensitivity.” I expressed that state across the entire frame. I selected images whose material textures and forms linger in the mind; the refined clarity is conveyed by balancing the sizes of the print and mat, while the heightened sensitivity to texture and form is suggested by encouraging viewers to look as if through a loupe. (Fukasawa.M)

【G】　The world of DAIDO MORIYAMA shown by AI
Produced & Edited by Sakura Tateishi and Hina Asano
Prompt Framework and Instruction by Ahn Jun

We selected seven photographs from four photobooks and rendered each into moving images with AI technology. What kind of scene unfolded at the very moment Moriyama pressed the shutter? Where was the fleeing woman running? How was the city breathing at the time of shooting? We imagined the time and space left outside the frame and, using AI, attempted to reconstruct that “unseen background.” The
heaving sea, the flow of passersby—through these AI-generated images, we sensed an atmosphere of Japan in the 1960s–80s that is absent from our own memories. (T・S / A・H)

【I】　Copy / Scatter Collaged by Saya Ikebe

Using Daido Moriyama’s oeuvre—which captures moments when the subject is no longer a subject—as source material, the work recomposes photographs as fragments. Different motifs are applied to each side of the box to express Moriyama’s multifaceted nature, while also attempting to visualize the chain of printing, reproduction, and consumption of photographs. The copier placed on top serves as a medium through which viewers generate new reproductions, reenacting Moriyama’s sense of time that “the past is always new, and the future is forever nostalgic.” (Ikebe S.)