Daido Moriyama (born 1938 in Ikeda, Japan) invented a new visual language with his work beginning in the mid-1960s. Frenetic and tormented, it depicted a reality that was grainy, blurry, and out-of-focus. Witness to the spectacular changes that trans-formed postwar Japan, his photographs express the contradictions in a country where age-old traditions persist within a modern society. Often blurred, taken from vertiginous angles, or overwhelmed by close-ups, they show a proximity to and a particular relationship with the subject. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Fondation Cartier, Daido Tokyo includes many previously unpublished photographs (as well as those featured in the exhibition), and an interview with the artist.
