Photography Criticism Paper: Daido Moriyama. Visual & Performing Arts

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Daido Moriyama is a contemporary Japanese photographer. Moriyama was born in Osaka, Japan on October 10, 1938. Moriyama first worked as a freelance graphic designer in 1958. Moriyama took photography lessons from a man named Takeji Iwamiya CITATION Art20 \l 1033 (Artnet). Moriyama moved in Tokyo in 1961 where he began creating and publishing his works on street photography. After several years of many achievements, Moriyama’s works were collected by various museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland CITATION Kwa20 \l 1033 (Kwai Fung Hin).
Raw black-and-white photographs with modern urban life and traditional composition had a huge impact on Moriyama's work even before Moriyama started his career. The overall aesthetic and conceptual interests of Moriyama include works with a uniquely grainy, blurry, and out-of-focus style which contrasted to be more overemphasized. The works are with abstraction because of the blurring figures CITATION Kwa20 \l 1033 (Kwai Fung Hin).
The concept of Moriyama’s photographs further developed because of experimentation with techniques focused on sensing and responding to light. Moriyama began taking snapshots that captured scenes and portraits of the streets that showed inspiration in everyday life. The photographs remained vague, ambiguous, and unclear but that was how the street impacts Moriyama. Moriyama stated he loved bigger cities very much because there is a variety of people that would give more stories regarding people’s desire, charm, comedy, tragedy, and anxieties. The scenes of the society are chaotic but the stories that the photograph captures show the characteristics and emotions of the city. Moriyama said that every city is a piece of art and that Moriyama does not need to create art by himself. The words of Moriyama regarding his art shows how humble Moriyama is as an artist. Moriyama does not claim the art as something he created but something that already exists.
The black and white concept of Moriyama's work is very emotional indeed. This is mainly because of the absence of vibrant colors. People would think that the artist is a bit gloomy and sad because of the concept. However, the works are more full of emotional stories of the people in the society and not merely because of the personality of the artist. The most famous photograph of Moriyama in 1971 is the iconic Stray Dog. It was often called as Moriyama’s unofficial self-portrait because it reflects the artist himself. Moriyama was like a stray dog because Moriyama always wandered the streets as if like searching for food. Moriyama shoots his photographs in different locations and Moriyama never stayed in a fixed location. Truly, Moriyama loves traveling to various places just to encounter different stories from society.
The aesthetic and conceptual interests of the artist were seen and achieved in every work of Moriyama. The style of Moriyama...