Daido Moriyama: Tales of Tono

by Daidō Moriyama (Photographer), Lena Fritsch (Translation), Simon Baker (Afterword)

Throughout his career, Daido Moriyama has produced a huge body of extremely influential photobooks, each demonstrating the variety and complexity of his work, from the blurred and grainy style of his early Provoke-era publications, to his more classic city- and object-based projects. "Tales of Tono," appearing here for the first time in English, is one such book. First published in 1976, and taking its name from a collection of Japanese rural folk legends, "Tales of Tono" is a compact little volume composed of black-and-white photo diptychs and spreads that were shot in the countryside of northern Honshu, Japan. Faithfully reproducing the original edition, this book contains a text by the artist that offers the reader a typically honest and self-effacing account of Moriyama's thoughts about his practice. More than 30 years since its original Japanese publication, "Tales of Tono" gives a fantastic insight into one of the world's most original and provocative photographers. It is published to coincide with a survey of the artist's work at Tate Modern, London.
Daido Moriyama was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1938 and moved to Tokyo in 1961, where he continues to live and work. His photography is characterized by powerful, high contrast black-and-white pictures, largely concentrating on little-seen parts of the city and highlighting the effects of industrialization on modern life in Japan. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Cartier Foundation, Paris; and the National Museum of Art, Osaka.

Genres: Photography, Japan

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese: 森山 大道, Hepburn: Moriyama Daidō, born October 10, 1938) is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine Provoke.

Moriyama began his career as an assistant to photographer Eikoh Hosoe, a co-founder of the avant-garde photo cooperative Vivo, and made his mark with his first photobook Japan: A Photo Theater, published in 1968. His formative work in the 1960s boldly captured the darker qualities of urban life in postwar Japan in rough, unfettered fashion, filtering the rawness of human experience through sharply tilted angles, grained textures, harsh contrast, and blurred movements through the photographer's wandering gaze. Many of his well-known works from the 1960s and 1970s are read through the lenses of post-war reconstruction and post-Occupation cultural upheaval.

Moriyama continued to experiment with the representative possibilities offered by the camera in his 1969 Accident series, which was serialized over one year in the photo magazine Asahi Camera, in which he deployed his camera as a copying machine to reproduce existing media images. His 1972 photobook Farewell Photography, which was accompanied by an interview with his fellow Provoke photographer Takuma Nakahira, presents his radical effort to dismantle the medium.

Although the photobook is a favored format of presentation among Japanese photographers, Moriyama was particularly prolific: he has produced more than 150 photobooks since 1968.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

the first photo essay i've ever READ, cover to cover. simply engrossing black&white film diptychs, gorgeously paired, plus a fascinating essay from moriyama on the notion of homesickness for a place of origin that doesn't exist.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A link to my in-depth review for the Japan Society UK: http://www.japansociety.org.uk/29619/...

[Lilly Sunshine · Rating 5 out of 5]

from iravati!

[Jeff Wyonch · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very striking set of black-and-white images. I'm not sure if he succeeds or not, but the book is small, beautiful, and you'll find yourself coming back to it over and over again.