Daido Moriyama

Daido Moriyama is one of the most important figures in contemporary Japanese photography. Born near Osaka in 1938, he witnessed the spectacular changes that unfurled in Japan in the decades after the Second World War and made the visual and existential upheaval of these shifts one of the principal subjects in his work.
In this catalog published for the his exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in 2003, the black-and-white, heavily grained photographs reflect the contradictions in modern Japan between age-old traditions and contemporary practices, revealing the paradox of a culture troubled but fascinated by the changes it is going through.