Suwa, Nagano

Daidō Moriyama

1982 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

One of the most important and accomplished Japanese photographers of the postwar era, Moriyama infuses his images with a modern aesthetic sensibility that conflates Asian and Western artistic traditions. Early in his career, he was profoundly influenced by William Klein's book, Life Is Good and Good For You in New York: Trance Witness Revels (1956), and his photographs from that period share the grainy, distressed appearance of Klein's photographs. Klein's brash, confrontational style mimicked the hostility of America's postwar urban environment; in Moriyama's work, the same audacity echoes the often incongruous and psychologically jarring juxtaposition in postnuclear Japan of Asian tradition with American influence, and, more recently, with the homogenizing power of contemporary industrial civilization.

Artist

Daidō Moriyama

Date

1982

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Jennifer and Joseph Duke Gift, 2002