andyjaggy82
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 p.16 #9 · Diado Moriyama shooting jpg with a P&S | |
S Dilworth wrote:
He has said Klein’s photos shocked him into taking up a camera. The current Tate Modern exhibition pairs Klein and Daido.
I think there are millions of ‘wannabe Daidos’, as ayler puts it, simply because his photos strike a chord with many people (especially young people). The vast majority of those people resonate with the basic aesthetic of are-bure-bokeh (rough, blurred, and out of focus) rather than any highfaluting philosophy behind it all.
There’s just something very visceral about edgy street scenes full of speed and motion. Printed large enough, the grainy off-kilter photos can be pretty intense to come face-to-face with in a gallery. They induce feelings of displacement, the contradictions of both feeling at home in the anonymous city and feeling rootless, the daily low-level panic of unfulfilled potential and desires, etc. – familiar themes for many people today. Because these themes are still highly relevant today, I think Daido’s appeal will not fade so easily. The art world can do what it wants, but new photographers will always want to emulate this, much as they still want to emulate Ansel Adams and HCB.
That’s what I like about Daido, actually. It’s only as conceptual as you make it. When I first came across his work I liked it at first glance, knowing nothing about it. Only later did I learn that in the sixties there was a short-lived Japanese magazine called Provoke, which pushed this unsettling aesthetic at a time when art critics expected to understand the photographs they looked at. Given the social context (the usual sixties stuff, breakdown of traditional mores, shaking off of postwar austerity, etc.), this magazine and its aesthetic signposted the way for a new generation of Japanese photographers eager for change. They lapped it up.
Curiously, given the current trend for printing very large, those Japanese photographers in the sixties and seventies didn’t originally shoot with the intention to print large, or make standalone prints at all, but rather photo-books. Photo-books were big in Japan (still are, I guess, but they’re big everywhere now). Daido still says he prefers them to fine prints. They encourage a different way of looking at photographs, where individual photos are subsumed by the overall body of work.
Eggleston would appear to agree with you, in this wonderful chat with director Michael Almereyda (from the William Eggleston in the Real World documentary I mentioned earlier)....Show more →
For some reason..... I must hate myself , I actually read through this entire thread. The above quoted post was the only post that actually held any merit to me. It was thoughtful, insightful, and well mannered.
I first looked at Moriyama's work when I opened this thread. I was not impressed, it just looked like more artsy bull to me and I quickly dismissed it as such, I've never been a fan of such work. Let others pay millions of dollars for it, I don't like it.
S Dilworth however explained why people like it and what makes him appreciate it. After reading his post I had to reevaluate my opinion and it made me see things from a slightly different perspective, which is what "art" is all about in my opinion.
I still don't like the work, but I can appreciate it a bit better now. S Dilworth accomplished in a few paragraphs of thoughtful writing what all the fanboyism and pretentiousness of Exdsc has failed to in an entire thread. If Exdsc's goal is to make people like Moriyama better, he is failing spectacularly. Then again that probably isn't his goal, the more obscure and under appreciated he is the more Exdsc will probably like him. Clearly everyone else just doesn't get it, but I do, therefore I am special.
To each their own, let me know when you guys figure out what is art and what isn't.  Cheers.
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) when asked about his imagery.
