Daido Moriyama (born 10 October 1938 in Ikeda, Osaka, Japan) is a Japanese photographer. He is known for his black and white photography, which often features gritty and raw images of urban life.
Moriyama moved to Tokyo in 1961 where he worked as a freelance photographer for various Japanese magazines and quickly gained recognition for his unique and innovative approach to the medium. In 1969 he joined the influential magazine Provoke. His work often explores themes of alienation, isolation, and the darker side of human nature.
Moriyama’s photography is characterized by its raw and gritty quality, which is achieved through his use of high-contrast black and white film and his unconventional approach to composition. He often uses unconventional angles and perspectives, and his images are often blurred or out of focus.
Throughout his career, Moriyama has published over 100 books, including the widely acclaimed A Hunter (1972), the experimental Farewell Photography (1972), as well as monographs dedicated to unique places such as Shinjuku (2002) and Hokkaido (2008).
His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, and he has received numerous awards including the Hasselblad Award (2018). He gained international recognition with his retrospective Stray Dog at SFMoMA in 1999.
Polaroid was a medium Moriyama has used unrelentingly for many years. The installation Polaroid Polaroid (1997) is a reconstruction of the artist’s studio through 3262 Polaroid images mounted on 26 boards (600 x 500 cm) and is an intimate und detailed view of his creative space. For his existentially titled exhibition “bye-bye polaroid” (2008) Moriyama has photographed the city of Tokyo to pay homage to polaroid prompted by the announcement that the Polaroid format would be discontinued later that year.
In 2022 the San Francisco based gallery Ratio 3 presented the exhibition 400 Polaroids that putted the two artists Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama in conversation. It was the first presentation of Moriyama’s Polaroids outside of Japan. But while Araki has long embraced the Polaroid as an experimental medium, for Moriyama, it has mainly played a diaristic role.

Polaroid books

Daido Moriyama. Random Walk
IBASHO & the (M)éditions 2021
ISBN: 979-10-95424-28-4

Daido Moriyama. Meta Meta
Akio Nagasawa Publishing 2022

Daido Moriyama. Passage
Wides Shuppan Co., Ltd 1999
ISBN-10: 4898300189
ISBN-13: 978-4898300183

Daido Moriyama. bye-bye polaroid
Taka Ishii Gallery 2008