Exhibition of Mark Ruwedel's photos at Tate Modern, Boiler House level 2 West.

Photo by Mirta Imperatori of Mark Ruwedel's work.

Late on Friday I decided to wander around Tate Modern to view the exhibition by Mark Ruwedel see pic. above; it was late so there was hardly anybody around which was great. I was able to spend more time focusing on the work without getting disturbed. Mark Ruwedel takes photographs of the North American landscape, presenting the human interaction with the landscape and what is left behind by human activity. The photographs are shown in sequence, they are small and are surrounded by a white frame. They force you to look in and slow down. I didn't feel the lighting in the room was correct; if you didn't pay attention, then at a distance the pictures tend to blend into themselves, with the detail getting lost see pic below.

Photo by Mirta Imperatori of Mark Ruwedel's work

I would have liked to see a different type of lighting, showing more detail of the photographs.

The photographs are ghostly views of flatlands, lines of tracks barely visible stretching into the distance, cutting through rocks. They are beautiful photographs taken with care, mid frontal shots, classical in terms of proportions and presented in an ordered way. They reminded me of Robert Adams.

Photo by Mark Ruwedel courtesy of Pinterest

I particularly liked the selection of empty houses left abandoned in the desert see pic above; they look like they are in the middle of nowhere but they are actually not far from LA. He is interested in the human trace, what is left behind after human activity  and the way the space has been used. He is questioning the notion of  'pure nature' showing that it's been degraded by human activity to the point where original nature no longer exists and the landscape has become an historical archive of human activity. He takes photos over and over again of the same subject using old fashioned methods: an analogue camera, old fashioned paper and traditional darkrooms methods.

Photo by Mark Ruwedel courtesy of Pinterest

He is attracted to neglected spaces. The houses in his photos are abandoned homes see pic. above, showing the residual traces of the human presence,  some of the houses have been so neglected that they are just disappearing back into the desert landscape. This prompts thoughts of transitoriness of human life with migration from one place to another. So a house that used to be someone's cherished home is no longer inhabited and degrades into nothing, it gives out a feeling of emptiness. The photographs share a sense of vulnerability and precariousness; according to Ruwedel they are tragic as they allude to a harsh environment.

Photo by Mark Ruwedel courtesy of Pinterest

Next to the above pictures there is also a series of photographs documenting areas in the Western United States, again photos of the desolate vast landscapes, named after hell or the devil by explorers and settlers, evoking the harsh environment, then unpopulated, now an historical archive of human presence see pic. above.

I was particularly interested also in his project called 'Following Nigel' where he literally followed long distance hiker Nigel Naab walking across Los Angeles.  He was following his own route across as many neighbourhoods as possible, both actual districts but also economic, social divides. Mark Ruwedel photographed what he found interesting along the way; he explored the different areas from the point of view of someone on foot, focusing on the signs of human movement. This particular work made me think of Vito Acconci & his work: 'Following Piece (October 3-25 1969)' where he picked a person at random & follow them until they entered a car, a building or a cinema.

Photo by Mark Ruwedel courtesy of Pinterest 

Most of the photographs in the exhibition are gelatin silver prints on paper, they are quite faint, giving a ghostly pallor.  There is also a series of photos of the edges of dried up lakes in the Californian desert, lakes formed thousands of years ago by melting glaciers see pic. above.
This is very topical because the disappearance of the lakes coincided with the arrival of humans. The photos invite us to think about the relationship between humans and landscape and the degradation that often follows human arrival. There is a further series of photos he took at the Wendover Air Force Base in Utah; this is where the pilots of the Enola Gay trained for the bombing of Hiroshima. The crafters shown in the photos are more recent.

I noticed towards the end of the exhibition a series of photos in homage to pop artist Ed Ruscha. Ruwedel took photos of fifteen apartments shown in Ruscha's series; they present a study on the changes of the urban landscape of Los Angeles.

Social Media.

The shooting at YouTube was really shocking. It was reported in the news that the shooter spent her whole time online, it sounds like her whole identity was based on her online activity and when  YouTube pulled the plug by filtering her content her identity collapsed, imploded. She was fixated by projecting her persona through YouTube and felt a sense of grievance which could have also occurred through non digital interactions.

Social media can be very addictive; basically they try to keep you on their sites as long as possible to make money. We are constantly checking for updates, interrupting the regular flow of things in the real world; it is the same with videos, you have to constantly upload videos to remain relevant. Nowadays in London you see a lot of people staring at their smart phones while walking, on transport, inside cafes, people are no longer talking or looking at each other, they have their noses peeled onto their screen, oblivious to the surrounding world; the real world is just another interruption from ones checking ones own screen. The irony is the more we seek to connect to others in the virtual world through social media the more we become disconnected from the real world. Isn't social media more ephemeral than real friends in the real world? There have been several studies done on this, where participants were found to feel more isolated after spending more than two hours on social media. Also more importantly people that spend longer times online were found to be less tolerant, less accepting of other people in the real world.

The fact is that interactions online can be of the same nature over and over again and you can ensure that your conversations are brief, but when you go back in the real world interactions may not be quite so easily managed. So being online for very long periods of time might leave you ill equipped to deal with problems in the real world. On the other hand, for some people who are house-bound social media can be an important life line where they can meet new people. 

Also the wanting to be constantly connected, worrying that you might not be answering messages, makes people anxious and leaves them unable to spend quiet time with themselves without feeling guilty or uncomfortable, with their minds somewhere else. We can show to the world a better side of ourselves online, for example with a wide ranging selection of filters on Instagram. Then there is the aspect of monetization; some people spend a lot of time online selling stuff on ebay, uploading videos to YouTube, Twitter or Instagram but how much money are users of these sites making? Some are doing very well but others are not, and they are just wasting time a bit like TV binging. The social media companies are making money with advertisements and people's data. Some people have a lot of followers and make an income but others don't make money at all. If one for example spends three hours each day on social media but one doesn't  make any money wouldn't they be better off just having a minimum wage normal job?

Losing followers and money can produce a negative psychological effect, especially to someone with a fragile identity with no real job who spends most of their time online on their own and whose identity revolves around this activity. This can never be an excuse for going around shooting people. I felt terrible for the poor people at YouTube, what a terrifying experience! And then there is the issue of censorship and where it crosses the line from social interest to social control. 

Social media can also be positive, helping people for example to get connected in a positive way. In one particular case a man from Yemen was able to escape war and death thanks to social media.

On the other hand some people, when their ratings go down do dangerous things, for example posting crazy things online to send their ratings back up again. If someone shutdown social media all of a sudden for whatever reason would people have a nervous breakdown or get their lives back? Some people find Facebook really useful in terms of getting info on events that are happening but are worried about the data breach. I do enjoy using YouTube and I have never had any problems with it. 

Also with other social media sites, you can get to meet people you wouldn't normally meet but it's not good to spend excessive amounts of time on it. But we go back to the addiction element of them; whilst you might enjoy interacting with others online, being connected, or having the impression of being connected, the lack of real friendships can bring problems in the real world. Are we really able to switch ourselves off from them? Also there may be a shortage of well paid, real jobs in the world and that's why a lot of people go online in the hope of promoting themselves, to make money. Some people have the false illusion that online you can become a star, they dream of becoming famous like on the TV show Britain's Got Talent. I mean some vloggers on YouTube do very well, but it is a highly competitive global environment, the bottom line is social media sites are a business with a global reach and when they expand too much they still have to deal with growth problems and other issues like any other business.

Some of this is what I have been addressing in my current work which is about isolation and anomie, a sense of disassociation from society. In an age where people are pushed to be constantly connected through digital media where is this leading us? If on one level we are using social media as a distraction from the things that give our life real meaning on another level social media is changing how we relate to each other. My work aims to highlight this dichotomy.

Text & images come under copyright  © 2018 Mirta Imperatori

Vera Lutter & Nancy Rubins at the Gagosian Gallery. Recommended.

How to sum up this winter? We had one of the darkest winters in years, snow in February and now snow again in the middle of March. I am happy though that the days are longer, it makes such a difference. I can't remember a year when it snowed this late, anyhow it looks beautiful, I love it! 

In the news also is the attempted assassination of Russians on British soil and the use of a chemical agent for the first time since WWII in Europe, and the fact that whoever used the chemical agent is most worryingly still out there.. Also I found the lack of information from the Government surprising, what to do if you come into contact with a nerve agent or other chemical, I mean like any other mere mortal I just googled it up on what to do in case it happens. With all of this happening & lack of sleep I was still able to meet my deadlines, with great results. I decided to take an afternoon off and go to the Gogasian Gallery near King's Cross station to view the works by Vera Lutter & Nancy Rubins. It was an oasis of peace in there.

Photo by Vera Lutter courtesy of the Gagosian Gallery.

The exhibition by Vera Lutter is titled Turning Time; she uses a large pinhole camera, she revived the camera obscura (light enters into a dark camera space thorough the pinhole and it projects an image inside the box onto the photgraphic paper) by using a large shipping container instead of using a small box. She then left the exposure for several hours, even days and months which then gave the work a ghostly appearance. All the photographs are large and are positioned in one room on the walls; some are put together as they are so large and you have to get close to notice this. She took photographs of ancient temples in Paestum, Italy, positioning the container at different angles, so has sometimes to get close ups of the subject or sometimes to get distant images. This ancient site includes three temples built around 550BCE, for the gods Neptune and Athena. Basically she turns a shipping container into a large camera obscura see pics above and below.

Photo by Vera Lutter courtesy of Pinterest.

Next to the above pictures are photographs of the Effelsberg Radio telescope at the Max Planck Insitut fur Radioastronomiey in Germany, where she went in 2013, that records cosmic acitvity in space see pic. below. They are all inverted black and white images, each image is unique, it is a slow process where she observes the changes that happened outside of the pinhole, like catching shadows; the long exposure gives a sense of emptiness, of the blackness of the photos observing the mystery of darkness, of time passing.  It actually reminded me of Andy Warhol's film Empire with the long observation of an object, registering the changes see link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMCeDBn1Zu0.
The pinhole camera is not well suited to capture fast movements such as cars, they would look like fragments, and it is an imaginative use of the camera obscura which was big in Victorian times. There are no people in the photographs; she would have spent a long time observing, recording the changes of the building over time.

Photo by Vera Lutter courtesy of Pinterest.

Her work is very different in nature from that of Nancy Rubins as evidenced in her exhibition titled Diversifolia which dominates the main room in a playful way. You can't really avoid it, not that you would want to as it is fun see pic below.

Nancy Rubin's sculptures photo courtesy of the Guardian.

It included found over-the-top garden ornamental objects/animals which are turned upside down, connected together through wires, going in different directions. She uses a structural property in her work called 'tensegrity': here the individual animals/objects are secured with tensile wires in a compact way. They made me think of bouquets of flowers scattered in all directions, that give you the illusion of floating in the air. They are monochrome, cast in iron, bronze, brass, aluminium, I went close up to them and I saw an upside down turtle at the bottom, a duck, a zebra, a crocodile tail, there is a lot to look at in the sculptures! While the wires zig zag through them, the sculptures invite you to walk around them to discover them as a whole. They have an organic feel to them, despite their being made of metal, as though they have grown rather then being designed, and they still retain a feeling of randomness & untidiness see pic below.

Photo courtesy of the Londonist.com.

In the exhibition room there are also two large drawings see pic below. At first I thought it was a wavy sculpture made out of aluminium (this is how good it is) fluidly moving across the wall, again in an organic way  and then when I went close up to it I realised it was made out of paper covered in graphite. It made me think of the heavy dense drawings by Richard Serra.

Photo courtesy of Pinterest.

It went really well with the other sculptures in the room, the balance between an organic fluid piece and the tension and the controlled caos and absurdity of the other works. I thought it was funny, the fact that she is recycling expensive garden ornaments that you would find in wealthy houses in California where she is based and she turns them into sculptures/installations which are surreal and which defy gravity. Brilliant exhibition.

My latest exhibitions.

Below is a selection of my photographs from my latest exhibitions in 2018 & 2017, which were successful and well attended.

Lewisham Arthouse 2018

Lewisham Arthouse 2018

Summer Exhibition 2017

Summer Exhibition 2017

Winter Exhibition 2017

The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro. Recommended.

I like going to the movies at odd hours when there is hardly anybody inside the cinema and I can fully focus on the movie without having to worry about people using their mobile phones or chatting, without getting some tall person sitting in front of me blocking the view. It's quite funny because I am not the only one doing this. Sometimes when I went to the movies I noticed a Chinese student doing exactly the same thing as I was doing, so we generally find each other at the same movie. Again this time I bought my ticket at the desk, not from a machine. I am not keen on machines that have replaced people, inside supermarkets and in other outlets, I just generally avoid them; companies should employ more people not soulless machines, machines take jobs from humans. It's amusing to see how England is adopting the worst from the USA and has become so Americanised; you know the long hours at work in the office, machines instead of people, poor quality coffee chains where the coffee costs double that in Europe and still doesn't taste of coffee.

Courtesy of Pinterest.

When I bought my ticket I said: Can I have one ticket for the Shape of Water? The guy behind the desk answered, sure, is this just for yourself? And I am like: as opposed to what? A dozen perhaps?.. Anyway I went inside the cinema, the Chinese student was already positioned in his favourite seat. I noticed that we were the only two single people in the whole cinema. We were surrounded by couples, it was more busy than usual...

Eliza & the amphibian fish, courtesy of Pinterest. 

The movie The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro is up for 13 nominations at the Oscars.

It's a fantasy, drama, romance, starring Sally Hawkings as Eliza Esposito, the mute cleaner  who works in a top secret military facility/lab in the Baltimore area. Doug Jones is the amphibian fish alien creature captured by the American Military in South America. They fall in love; he will break her monotony of daily egg eating and cleaning at the facility, he will learn her language and how to be emotionally intelligent. Eliza Esposito has two friends, one is the gay older illustrator called Giles, played by Richard Jenkins, with whom she lives in the same building above a cinema. They are both single and sexually frustrated and they keep each other company by watching old films on TV, usually musicals.

Giles & Eliza, courtesy of Pinterest.

Giles likes a young man that works in a restaurant where they make pies. Giles goes there regularly with Eliza to buy pies they don't like as an excuse to chat to the man behind the counter. But it's the early 1960's and things are not smooth if you are gay and when he makes a pass at the counter guy, he is told to leave and not come back. This is another dig from the director at the wholesome image of America; in fact the guy behind the counter hates gays and is a racist, he is not as nice as he appears.

Giles was  forced to leave his job and spends most of the time in his studio at home with his cats creating the perfect illustration that might get him his job back. The funny bits of the movie are left to Eliza's other friend Zelda, played by Octavia Spencer, another cleaner at the military lab.

Dr Hoffstetler with Eliza, courtesy of Pinterest.

I found the character of Dr Hoffstetler, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, the scientitist in the lab who is studying the creature, had depth because he is not just a scientist but also a Russian spy. He  is not close to the creature, unlike Eliza, but can see the creature responding emotionally. Dr Hoffstetler responds emotionally too, putting himself at risk when helping Eliza, which is not generally what scientists in movies do but he still does it from a scientific point of view. He will help Eliza, Giles and Zelda to save the creature from a violent fate at the hand of the guard Strikland, played by Michael Shannon. While Eliza is gentle to the creature and he responds to her in a gentle way, Strickland is a sadist government guard who enjoys causing pain to the creature. He hates its freakishness and smell. He loves power, he abuses power, so we see him in his work environment dominating others through fear. The meaning of this is violence brings more violence and that people in authority can abuse power if not kept in check.

Guard Strickland, Eliza & Zelda courtesy of Pinterest.

Then we see him in his home environment. Perfect on the outside, with the 1950's ever so pleasing wife, who cooks and cleans. It's the ideal of suburbia, the American dream, but it is all rotten. Everything looks perfect and beautiful on the outside but it is not so on the inside. Strickland is a troubled dark character. He enjoys inflicting violence on the creature, seeking to be in control. I don't like violence in movies, I generally find it hard to watch or hear about violence inflicted on others so I was sliding down inside my chair hiding behind my popcorn at violence scenes.

Strickland's family is a dysfunctional family where the wife is there to please her husband and his sexual desires while not truly expressing herself, she is a robot, a non entity. Strickland has little emotional connection with her and the kids, he wants her not to talk when they have sex, he doesn't care about her as long as his sexual needs are met. Strickland wants a better car, he will buy a flashy expensive car beyond his salary and to afford it he is willing to kill the creature, so he puts his wants and desires before anybody else's, he is a selfish man, he represents selfish capitalism but after buying the expensive car he is still not happy. The parable of this is that consumerism doesn't make you happy for long. Eliza, Giles, Zelda and Hoffstetler are the heart and the true heroes of the story, they are the outsiders, the misfits. Happiness has got nothing to do with how much money you have or what you own.

Giles & Eliza, courtesy of Pinterest.

Guillermo del Toro uses a specific colour palette throughout the movie, such as blue/greens/teal more inside the lab and grey representing metal and cold, while inside Eliza's and Giles's flats there are more earthy colours with hints of red here and there that add warmth. There is the green lime pie, or the green soap dispenser inside the lab. The candy that Stirckland eats is green, his car is teal, candy holds no nutritional value, it's just sugar. Eliza's shoes at one point are red, her coat is red too, red which symbolises love, passion and love for the cinema. Blue, green for water but also for the future. Giles's & Eliza's flats are old, they remind you of old Europe, post war Europe, it is nostalgic. The colour scheme creates a dreamy tone and an alternate atmosphere. The colours help the development of the story. It is a beautiful, moving, well thought out movie.

The movie: Ida.

Ida - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

A friend suggested seeing the movie Ida. It is a beautifully shot black and white movie that reminds you of Vermeer paintings. It came out a while back and I missed it at the cinema at the time. At the beginning of the movie, I thought how beautiful it was, but as the movie goes along, the grey  landscape and the minimal way it is shot feels oppressive; however, it is oppressive and beautiful at the same time. This is the story of Anna, a novice catholic nun, 17 years old, who has lived all her life inside a convent, and has not experienced life in the world outside.  She is about to take her final vows in the convent where she was abandoned as an orphan baby. But she has one surviving relative, her aunt. The Mother Superior insists she contacts her aunt before Anna, later known as Ida, takes her final vows.

Ida - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

Her aunt, Wanda Gruz, played by Agata Kulesza, is a completely opposite character to Ida.  She is a combative, hard-drinking woman who lives on her own and is a far more interesting character than Ida. When Ida goes to meet her aunt for the first time, Wanda is standing near the window in the kitchen, chain smoking, in her dressing gown, a man is lying in bed next door. One makes some immediate assumptions about Wanda. Pawlikowski the director encourages this by taking a direct camera shot at the man in bed. The whole setting of the scene leads you  to understand that Wanda is not married, and the situation is that Ida is meeting her aunt just after she has been having sex. But Wanda is not what you might think, she is actually a magistrate.

Ida - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

Wanda brutally tells her niece who she, Anna, really is. Anna's original name is Ida Lebestein, and she is Jewish. So she says to her niece, sarcastically; you know you are a Jewish nun! There is shock in Ida's face, it is all understated acting. This piece of information changes everything. It will make her question her faith and who she is in the world. Ida says to Wanda that she wants to know what happened to her parents during the war. Wanda and you yourself the viewer are dreading this as you know very well what happened to Jewish people during World War II in Poland, the Holocaust. As the viewer you know that this is going to be a difficult, emotional journey. But Wanda takes charge and they set off on a road trip.

Ida - Photos courtesy of Pinterest

This is a dark journey, one that questions the silence of the Catholic Church, depicts anti-semitism, the awful things people do to survive, and how do they live or not with their decisions afterwards.  This is in stark contrast with Ida the nun, her innocence, her naivety, her habits which have all been established by a pre-ordered system, her going to bed at the same time, saying prayers at the same time. Her status as a nun gives her the respect of the local people in Catholic Poland which is almost comical, as you now know she was born Jewish.

Ida - Photos courtesy of Pinterest

Wanda opens up and pushes the local people in the village with force and coercion to tell her the truth about what happened to Ida's parents and at this stage you realise it is not Ida who is most affected by this but it is actually Wanda. Her sister was murdered in a forest. In one particular scene you can hear the sound of the wind and the rattling of Ida's parents' bones which they take to bury properly, and you realise why she is the way she is: the heavy drinking, constantly sleeping with men, not able to be close to anybody. All this makes you realise that she is the one who survived, she carries the weight of these wartime experiences.... does she now suffer from survival guilt?

Ida - Photos courtesy of Pinterest

Ida realises as well that Wanda, the only surviving relative of her family, is lost and depressed; there are two sides to her, one that is pro-active and fighting to move forward and the other which is self destructive, and you don't know which side will prevail. Ida's moral innocence is counterbalanced by the weight of her aunt's history and life, you are very much aware she had to carry it all by herself and that has made her feel separated from others, unable to truly share who she really is. The person with whom she shared everything, her beloved sister, was brutally murdered. All of this is handled by the director with minimal shooting, that makes you think of the French director Truffaut and Bergman. There is no direct violence, but the sense of war is  strongly felt throughout the movie.The lengthy camera shots, the closeups of the forest, the vast landscape covered in snow, the rattling bones; all is done by association. It is a lyric movie that opens a lot of questions on the history of Poland during the war and about collaboration and antisemitism and it raises questions about faith and living in the material world.

Primo Levi - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

At a certain point the movie made me think of Primo Levi, whose death always troubled me. How can someone of his rigour and discipline, who survived Auschwitz, then die years later at his own hand. 

I always preferred to believe Rita Levi Montalcini's version of events saying he could have just fallen down the staircase of his appartment block in Turin; yes he was on antidepressants, but some people have side effects from them, making them unsteady, dizzy, lowering blood pressure. He could have just simply slipped off by mistake since he had just had surgery and the staircase was rather tight. Anyway, his writing legacy lives on with the masterpiece on Auschwitz 'If This is a Man'.

Photo courtesy of Pinterest

Going back to Ida, it is a powerful, beautiful, minimalist movie that opens up a lot of questions, but I felt that neither woman, Wanda or Ida, was able to overcome their history; they are bound up in it.

From the point of view of an artist, I think I was observing how the film was shot, the shots on the landscape that create a mood, and the beautiful black and white monochrome which I have been using myself lately in my photographs. I have a keen interest in analogue photography, the difference sense of time one gets from using analogue instead of digital, by working in a dark room instead of a computer.

Tate Modern level 4: Daido Moriyama's photographs.

With my friends we run a music club once a week where we meet and listen to music, each of us can choose a piece and sometimes describe it, if the others don't know it. The last time I went to my friends' house, which I love doing because it's like going back to England in the 1950's, you step inside and it's a time warp, everything literally is from the 1950's, and we spend time listening to wonderful music.
I look at their couch in wonder, I can't believe this 1950's style type of couch still exists, it is so comfortable, just perfect for listening to music.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Anyway after I viewed the installation of photographs by Carrie Mae Weems at Tate Modern, I decided to go up to level 4 and look at Daido Moriyama's photographs. I was curious about his work, his obsessiveness in taking photographs and leaving them undeveloped for 30 years.

Moriyama (born in 1938), the master of street photography, worked for the photographic journal Provoke by invitation of Takuma Nakahiri, who in 1968 asked him to join in the second issue see pic below.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama took photographs of a couple having sex in a hotel. This was in contravention of traditional Japanese culture. He loved photographing his area in Tokyo called: Shinjyuku. He has always been a voyeuristic street photographer, wandering around, pointing and shooting with his camera. His style called: Bure(=Shake) and Boke(=No focus). He made the images blurry, unfocused, grainy, shot in rapid succession, then seeing how they developed in the darkroom.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

He was inspired by Jack Kerouac's On the Road and the fact that he wrote on a continuous roll of paper, no interruptions. In Moriyama's case continuously taking photographs of the ordinary, taking in the city landscape, his impressions of the city, chance encounters, moods but also the grittiness of the ordinary, without trying to prettify them. With this approach he still produced striking images. His close ups make you slow down as a viewer, they force you to look in at the everyday that could be your everyday, he shows imperfect human beings up close: a woman opening her eye wide see pic below, a boy's shaved head; they could all be you the viewer, you tend to identify with them as they are depicted in a natural, ordinary way. He also takes photos of discarded, ugly objects, that you might not have noticed. The photographs are all in sequence, closely put together like a menu of images that create a view of a city they are melancholic images of the ordinary.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

It should be understood that this technique of documentating the everyday life in an urban environment, for example showing a photo of a urinal covered in tape, was a departure from the norms in Japan. It can be linked to the mass observation movement originating in the UK in 1937. Mass observation aimed to record everyday life in Britain, using large numbers of untrained volunteer observers. The photos in the exhibition are monochrome; by using black and white instead of colour he avoids distractions and he is able to focus for example more on detail close ups such as facial expressions.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama published the book Farewell Photography, orginally titled Bye Bye Photography Dear, in 1972. He was deconstructing photography, a process which he started with the photobook Hunter published in the same year.  The entire collection of images was exhibited for the first time at the Paris Photo 2015. The images were out of focus, randomly challenging Western precise photography at the time. Moriyama describes it with these words: 'The authority of the failed negative, with its inherent possibility, could be restored. I imagined I could construct a book - a book of pure sensations without meaning, by shuffling into a harmonious whole, a series of childish images'. Basically he is saying that all photographs are equally valid.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

The book had a punk quality about it, distinguishing it from the photographic medium of its time. It was a forerunner of images that would be used in the 1980's & 1990's, for example by Ray Gun Magazine, an American alternative rock and roll magazine founded by art director David Carson which used an experimental typography and abstract chaotic design. The first issue in November 1992 had on its cover Henry Rollins.

Photo of Ray Gun Magazine courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama also published Memories of a Dog, which was part of Asahi Camera, in 1983. This contains a famous photograph, a close up of a stray dog looking at the camera photographed in Misawa City in 1971. The way the dog is turned towards tha camera with his shoulders down, with a tired, beaten, almost human expression, provides an image that is at once beautiful and wretched, see pic below. The grainy monochromatic quality of the photograph produces poetry.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama said 'some days our howl is that life is wretched, some days life is wonderful'. It was a chance encounter he saw the dog as soon as he stepped out of the hotel where he was staying. You become completely absorbed by his photographs. The book is brilliant, showcasing his travels, it's an autobiographical account, the bars, the coffee shops he has visited, his school, it's about memory, it's nostalgic. He juxtaposes different images together. It was interesting to see ordinary life in Tokyo by a Master, I love his monochromatic photographs.