PARIS, Feb 7 — The Fondation Cartier for Contemporary Art in Paris is opening a new exhibition on Saturday presenting the work of Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. The artist’s first exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in 12 years, “Daido Tokyo” will focus on his recent work — a selection of both black and white and colour photography. The Fondation Cartier has also commissioned a new work from the photographer in conjunction with the exhibition.

Daido Moriyama’s photography focuses on the urban landscape and street life with images that are often out of focus, vertiginously tilted or invasively cropped to reflect the disjunctive nature of the contemporary urban experience. Moriyama’s work has frequently centered around Tokyo and in particular his neighbourhood in the Shinjuku district.

Intended to defamiliarise everyday life, Moriyama’s photographs portray items such as faded posters, reflections in shop windows, odd-shaped pipes and the faces of passersby. The artist has revealed that he doesn’t look into the viewfinder when shooting and tends to use his body more than his eyes to capture reality. The result is characterised by a hasty “snapshot aesthetic” that captures a sense of a disordered urban reality.

 

Another piece from the ‘Daido Moriyama Tokyo Colour, 2008-2015’ series.

In the 1970s Moriyama began to experiment with colour photography, and since the early 2000s a lot of his work has been shot in colour. A large number of these are featured in the exhibition. Moriyama uses colour to complement the black and white work. “The black and white tells about my inner worlds, my emotions and deep feelings that I feel every day walking through the streets of Tokyo or other cities as a vagabond aimlessly. The colour describes what I meet without any filters and I like to record the instant for the way it looks,” says Moriyama.

A piece from the ‘Daido Moriyama Dog and Mesh Tights, 2014-2015’ series.

Fondation Cartier has commissioned the work “Dog and Mesh Tights” specifically for the exhibition. The photographs cover a nine-month period from July 2014 to March 2015 and explore obscure corners of the urban environment. The images were captured during Moriyama’s wanderings in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei, Arles, Houston and Los Angeles. The result resembles an unfinished jigsaw puzzle that conveys the “confusing interaction of people and things” in the urban landscape.

The Daido Moriyama exhibition will run from February 6 until June 5, 2016. For more information visit: http://fondation.cartier.com/#/en/home/  — AFP-Relaxnews

The ‘Daido Moriyama Dog and Mesh Tights, 2014-2015’ series is specifically commissioned by the Fondation Cartier for the exhibition.