Sometimes the best images are the ones that make you think twice about why they look good, those that for some reason just work. Hunter Skipworth explores the beautifully imperfect photographs of Daido Moriyama. Daido Moriyama is a master of imperfection, his skill with ‘misuse’ of a camera is unsurpassed. His images sometimes lack focus, may be overexposed, too grainy or blurred. But it is for these reasons that he remains a legend amongst photographers. Moriyama is able to manipulate film and focus in ways that few photographers can. He is able to capture a moment in a totally unique way: overexposing for effect, ‘pushing film’ to bring contrast to scenes that would otherwise appear uninteresting. In essence Moriyama breaks away from what a camera is traditionally intended for: capturing an image. Instead he makes use of the flaws in photography to bring together perhaps some of the most interesting and influential street photography ever.
Moriyama began his photographic career in 1960 while studying under Takeji Iwayima in Osaka. He quickly moved to Tokyo, this is when Moriyama started to get interesting. Inspired after reading Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ he set out taking landscape photos from cars. The series, surprisingly entitled ‘On the Road’ ran in the famous Mainichi Camera. What followed was numerous trips to New York, exhibitions, books and in 1974 the founding of WORKSHOP photography school. Moriyama has released innumerable amounts of material all exhibiting his signature photographic technique and still shoots today. For those lucky few, he can still be seen shooting around Shinjuku and Shibuya.
‘Provoke’ magazine was spurred on by photographer Shomei Tomatsu in an attempt to revolutionise photojournalism. It exhibited all kinds of weird and unusual photographic techniques. It was in this that Moriyama found his calling. He ran an article towards the end of the magazines life which showed images of Western and Japanese products on shelves in a supermarket. They were photos that no one else would think of taking, almost totally lifeless. But it was Moriyama who brought them to life, ‘pushing film’ to create an extremely contrasty image. The detail on the products barely visible but the meaning and the story in the picture retained and in many ways exaggerated.
What made Moriyama so influential was his technique and his mastery of it. Effectively, Moriyama would shoot with very high ASA film, 1600 for example, day or night. He would underexpose the image heavily and then overdevelop it in the darkroom. This would result in a tremendous loss of detail but a massive gain in character. Images would appear extremely high contrast, with exaggerated shadows and blown out highlights. His images are unnatural, the subject matter always the last thing that you would think of shooting. But in this way Moriyama discovered Tokyo’s little secrets, those little moments that make street photography so enjoyable.
In the way that Henri Cartier-Bresson made photojournalists think twice about composition and approaches to capturing an image itself, Moriyama made people think twice about subject. I see a little bit of Moriyama’s photography in nearly every piece of modern day photojournalism. Take Tim Hetherington’s 2007 World Press Photo of the Year; its not focused, its composition is odd and its underexposed but.. it is incredibly
powerful. All the atmosphere of the image is exaggerated by its flaws. Obviously the subject matter of the two is totally different but both are made better in the sense they are not traditionally ‘good’ photographs.
Next time you go out shooting, why not take a leaf out of Moriyama’s book and misuse your camera. Take strange exposures, use unusual film, misfocus and experiment. Who knows, you might discover a new type of photograph; ones that look good for reasons you cannot explain.
Gallery of Daido Moriyama [all images copyright Daido Moriyama]
.
* Visit Daido Moriyama’s website and see galleries of all of his work. You will require Adobe FlashPlayer.
