Daido Moriyama

[gr82bart]

http://www.moriyamadaido.com/

The website is entirely in Japanese, but the images are amazing.

Regards, Art.

 

[Guillaume Zuili]

I love his work.

 

[jmal]

One of my favorites too. I have a few of his books that I really enjoy returning to again and again.

 

[GFDarlington]

I've only recently come across his work - having discovered a whole range of Japanese photographers through Parr & Badger's two photobook volumes. I much prefer his work to most of the others, including the more famous Sugimoto and Akiri, for its starkness, the extreme soot and chalk graphical quality, and the warts and all examination of the urban environment. Its the sort of photography I'd love to do if I had the confidence to work out on the streets shooting from the hip. I gather he can shoot 20 rolls of Tri-X a day and uses a 35mm point and shoot for most of his work and this shows in the fantastic grain and tonality he seems to get. I've just purchased a number of his more recent books and the one on Hawaii is really brilliant - I am so pleased to have acquired it and would recommend it as fantastic introduction to the broad range of his work.

 

[Michael W]

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=VViYphLJWOk

here you can see him out taking photos & doing some printing. It's from a Japanese documentary about him. For some reason there is no audio on this clip. Still very interesting to watch.

 

[GFDarlington]

Goldie

Thanks for posting the link to the youtube page. What a fascinating 8 minutes of footage. It caused me to go straight to the two books I have to look more closely at his technique and the sheer randomness of his image making and composition, and then back to the video to check it all out again. Inspirational - it all seems so alien to my own way of making photographs and yet I now feel really excited again about the possibilities of image making. Same sort of feeling I had when I first came across the series of 'Contact's' DVDs, which I also feel are also worth checking out.
Graham

Graham

 

[Michael W]

I did a search based on the info on youtube & found this is an excerpt from a full length doco about Moriyama that was made around 2001. It's available on DVD from Japan. The site I found was only in Japanese & I suspect there are no English subtitles. Still it might be worth buying just to watch the rest.

 

[firecracker]

Moriyama is like a cult guru in Japan. Many amateurs try to steal or borrow his style of shooting and printing with the same kind of equipment and supplies (Ricoh GR1, TriX, #4 graded paper, etc).

 

[jmal]

Anyone have any detailed insight into his printing methods/techniques? I know that I have tried to mimic his look before (I'm not affraid to admit it!) and I can get close on some things, but many of his photos I can't figure out. Thanks.

 

[firecracker]

Anyone have any detailed insight into his printing methods/techniques? I know that I have tried to mimic his look before (I'm not affraid to admit it!) and I can get close on some things, but many of his photos I can't figure out. Thanks.

I'm not his fan or anything at all, but I just hear and have read things his style and technique here and there.

He currently shoots Ricoh GR1 camera. Could be GR1v or something. He owns 7 of them. But he's the kind of guy who doesn't choose anything particular. A little while ago, he was known for shooting Contax T3, Olympus mju (the first version), and back in the 60's he was a Pentax SLR user. Also he was using half-frame Olympus Pen earlier in his career.

Oh, there's a book that has his work shot by Holga. This is pretty recent, though.

For developing the neg, he basically shoots TriX, develops at higher temp, and push it, but I don't know the numbers and charts. He wants that kind of grainy look, and it is well known that he was after William Klein's style back in the day.

And he prints on #4 graded RC paper (could be 10x12" paper size), used to be Mitsubishi cold-tone, but lately Fujibro/Fujibromide, and crops images however he wants. For that he uses Fujimoto/Lucky 90M enlarger with El Nikkor lenses. I heard he uses 63mm lens, but maybe not all the time, I don't know.

But for the exhibition prints, large FB prints, he has a printer guy he works with. And for some events, there's a digital priner guy who copies the images from the original ones.

 

[Michael W]

I was looking at a book of his called Shinjuku. There seemed to be a few different film types used. Some of the shots were extremely high contrast & had golf ball sized grain. I thought he might have used the old Kodak recording film. Or perhaps he dev'd Tri-X in dektol.

 

[jmal]

I have that book and I always assumed he used a grain enhancing developer and just enlarged/cropped to the extreme. There are some of his photos that seem overexposed/overdeveloped to the point of almost disappearing, yet they have elements that are very detailed and exhibit a range of tones. The odd thing is that the blown out parts are adjacent to the detailed areas and appear to be similarly lit. Good stuff.