Memories of a Dog

by Daidō Moriyama

First edition thus (first English edition), first printing. Hardcover. Black paper-covered boards, with title stamped in gray on spine, with dust jacket. Photographs and text (in English) by Daido Moriyama (translated by John Junkerman, who also translated the text for the important book "The History of Japanese Photography," published in 2003 by Yale University Press and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). 192 pp., with 73 black and white plates, beautifully printed by Toppan Printing Co., Ltd., Japan. The photographs were selected by Moriyama for this edition, and represent work spanning his career to-date. These autobiographical essays, widely considered to be THE essential text to gain a understanding of Daido, the artist and his work, have until now only been published in Japanese. The essays in this book were first published in fifteen installments in the Japanese periodical Asahi Camera beginning in 1983, and have since been published in book form in Japan under the same title. For those English-speaking followers of Moriyama's work, this book of important essays and photographs (available in Japanese paperback editions at most street corner news kiosks in Tokyo) will certainly deepen one's connection to a lifelong body of work that is at once haunting and beautiful, clear and nearly unrecognizable, distant and emotionally confrontational. Moriyama's genius quickly becomes apparent as the writings and images expand upon a vision as powerful as any in the history of photography. Required reading -- a glimpse into the mind of an extraordinary artist and his work -- and a precious gift to the English-speaking admirers of Moriyama's work. 10 x 7 inches. This first edition was limited to 3000 hardbound copies. New in publisher's shrink-wrap.

Genres: Photography, Japan, Art

192 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1984

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

[CM · Rating 2 out of 5]

A photo book with some short,personal essays. The writing seems somehow awkward in this English translation as it's more than a bit stilted. The photographs are fine but only a few really stands out in my eyes. As a whole, rather disappointing but hey, it's just one of his many photo books.

An extract:
"Memory is not simply the repeated reproduction of the past. With the watershed of the continually forged present as the borderline ,memory imagines the past,is reconstructed by passing through a variety of media ,and is further projected onto the future that is to come in an eternal cycle...I think the documentary character of photography is not simply the freezing of the time of an event,but rather has the quality of being unceasingly involved with the totality of time stretching endlessly before and after."

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I entered a dream state reading this book, looking at the photos. I have noticed that when Japanese is translated to English, it does indeed create an atmosphere like dreaming.