Reflection and Refraction

Daido Moriyama’s Reflection and Refraction is compiled from two earlier collections, Auto-portrait and Sunflower, published by MMM in 2010 and 2011 respectively. Carefully sequenced and handsomely printed in deep, resonant blacks that intensify the grainy textures Moriyama so famously elicits from his street scenes and interiors, Reflection and Refraction forms a cumulative record of Japan’s often contradictory social fabric. Moriyama’s images are intensely brooding and yet seemingly casual, establishing a relationship to the world that he likens to his shadow, in the brief preface to this volume: “I strolled down the street holding a camera, my shadow falling onto the road and across walls. With the sun high above, my shadow followed closely, as though pursuing me. The silhouette-shadow was now my companion […] This is how my shadow and I relate to each other. Similarly, my camera and I, or the world and photography also connect to each other in the same way.”

Daido Moriyama was born in Osaka in 1938. After studying photography under Takeji Iwamiya and serving as an assistant to photographer Eikoh Hosoe, he started his freelance career in the 1960s and crafted his own snapshot style under the influence of numerous Japanese and Western artists. His solo works have been published and displayed in many local and international exhibitions, and can be seen at Fondation Cartier pour l'art Contemporain (Paris), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Tokyo), and other public collections worldwide. Moriyama's artistic achievements have won him the New Artist Award from the Japan Photo Critics Association (1967), the Photographer of the Year Award from the Photographic Society of Japan (1983), Der Kulturpreis der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Photographie (2004), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center of Photography (2012), and many others.