Daido Moriyama

In 2003, the Fondation Cartier organised the first major exhibition of Moriyama's black-and-white œuvre in France. In 2016, they dedicated another solo exhibition to the artist, Daido Tokyo, which highlighted the artist's most recent work, including a vast ensemble of colour photographs. Moriyama was also featured in Mémoires Vives (2014) and Autophoto (2017). 

His primary influences included the other avant-garde photographers of the Vivo agency where he also did a brief stint, like Shomei Tomatsu with whom he shared a fascination for street photography, and Eikoh Hosoe from whom he developed a taste for dramatisation and eroticism. He also discovered the works of William Klein and Robert Frank from whom he acquired the technique of capturing subjects in movement, using his camera as an extension of his body. All of these influences were evident as he made his debut as an independent photographer in 1964, as well as in his work for the avant-garde magazine Provoke, for whom he began working in 1968. His images are instinctive and transgressive and he created a visual language all his own, frenetic and tormented, often playing with shots that were out of focus and grainy to emphasize a deformation of the real. His first monograph was Japan: a Photo Theater (1968), followed by his artist book Farewell Photography (1972), which won him immediate recognition.