Purple Magazine
— F/W 2012 issue 18
Close Your Eyes
by DAIDO MORIYAMA
Born in 1938 in Osaka, the cult photographer Daido Moriyama originally studied graphic design. He moved to Tokyo in 1961, where he became the assistant of Eikoh Hosoe, the most important post-World War II photographer in Japan. At the end of the ’60s, he became part of the Japanese photographic avant-garde alongside Takuma Nakahira, who showed together in the experimental magazine and group called Provoke.
Later, he began to be recognized for his grainy black-and-white pictures of city life. The streets of Shinjuku — his favorite neighborhood — were his subject. The photographs of William Klein, the writing of Jack Kerouac, and the early paintings of Andy Warhol inspired his style. Moriyama’s black-and-white photographs often explore subjects such as death, erotic obsession, and irrationality.
Recently, he started to explore the potential of color in his photography, moving from death, fear, and desolation, to a lighter and more intimate focus on non-events, between moments of incidental discovery that come from practiced noticing. The fish, flowers, and semi-clad mannequins, the fellow wanderers he shoots — mostly women and young girls — and the minor incidents, like being caught in traffic or stopping to buy cigarettes, are a reflection of life’s common necessities — the things that draw people out and toward each other.
Moriyama’s vision has been one of Purple’s most important sources of inspiration, right from the beginning of the magazine and still is now.
Photographs from the book Color, 2012, Tokyo, published by Getsuyosha Limited.
