Daido Moriyama

Daido Moriyama was born on October 10, 1938. Upon the death of his father by train accident in 1938, Moriyama began to work as a free lance designer in Hirano- cho, Osaka. In 1964,Moriyama began to study photography under Takejiwamiya. In 1964, he began to work as a photographer. Moriyama joins the magazine, Provoke , in 1968. It is during this time that Moriyama is inspired by Jack Kerouace's novel On the Road; he begins to take pictures of landscapes from vechicles. Later Provke is disolved due to a scandalous series in a Playboy magazine. In the year 1974, Workshop Photography School is established by Moriyama and other photographers. Later in 19787, Moriyama opens his own gallery in Shibuya, Tokyo. More recently, In 2003 Moriyama recieved that Mainichi Art Award.

Information Provided by Daido Moriyama Biography

In 2008 Moriyama did an exhibition, “bye bye polaroid”. It included five hundred and four images of Toyko between the span of April and October in 2008. It was shown at Taka Ishii Gallery from November 15 to December 13, 2008. It is an exhibition focused on the fact that Polaroid has stopped manufacturing instant film. Due to the increase in the digital market and the reduced demand in instant film, such a decision had to be made. Moriyama bid Polaroid reverence and a tearful farewell to a medium he had used for several years in this project.

This is a short excerpt about the project from Moriyama

“Snap the shutter and get a photo in a minute!” was the underlying concept and stance behind using polaroid, rather like the instant rice TV commercial “Step in the front door and have rice in two minutes!” For more than half a century, polaroid enabled the dream for instantly visible pictures to become reality. I have to write this in the past tense because Polaroid ended the production of instant films this summer. So I thought about holding an exhibition of polaroids to say good bye to the medium personally. Yes, “bye-bye polaroid!” There was nothing more exciting for me than taking polaroid pictures."

-Daido Moriyama

Information provided by LURING AUGUSTINE and Taka Ishii Gallery