Daido MORIYAMA 森山大道
(b. 1938, Osaka, Japan)

Daido Moriyama is one of Japan’s foremost contemporary photographers. Moriyama’searly works reveal the dark underside of urban Japanese life, and the breakdown of strict, traditional values in the post-war period. One of the photographer’s aims is to reveal the hidden beauty in that which is conventionally regarded as flawed, engaging closely with the Japanese world-view of wabi-sabi which seeks beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature. Strongly inspired by Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Moriyama is interested in the importance of the journey; he wanders large metropolises and attempts to uncover the seedier sides of urban life, as well as the hidden parts of the city. In part due to these reasons, his work has a strong sense of voyeurism.