2012: The year that was.

It's 31 December and an apt time to mentally wander back though 2012. Reflecting on our programme and its impact, it seems we've finished the year as we begun - working intensively and passionately and with no shortage of inspiring projects on the horizon. To everyone who has contributed to and supported this little adventure in contemporary photography, our sincerest thanks.

What follows (in no specific order) is our list of the best of the past 12 months here at 1000 Words:

-the appointment of an Associate Editor, Brad Feuerhelm, and Editor at Large, Louise Clements, whose roving eyes and busy travel itineries have allowed us to see and report on even more fine photography

-two issues of 1000 Words Photography Magazine, based around themes of Uncertainty and Murmur, released in March and September respectively

-staging an 'in conversation' at Daniel Blau Gallery, London, between Tate's Curator of Photography, Simon Baker, and Chris Shaw to a sell out audience

-1000 Words Deputy Editor, Michael Grieve, conducting portfolio reviews across four days in March at Fotofest in Houston, Texas, USA, and Brad Feuerhelm attending Vienna International Portfolio Review, Austria, as a reviewer during late November

-launching the inaugural 1000 Words Award; a professional development opportunity that allows four photographic artists to realise a new body of work whilst receiving a £1,000 cash prize, 18 months mentorship, three workshops with Jeffrey Silverthorne, Antoine d'Agata and Patrick Zachmann in London, Marseille and Seville respectively, a travelling exhibition through the UK, France, Spain and Italy, a catalogue and DVD plus a feature in 1000 Words Photography Magazine

-one 1000 Words Workshop with Roger Ballen that took place in the wonderfully evocative old town of Fez, Morocco

-attracting positive press coverage in The Telegraph, The Guardian and Source Magazine

-securing funding from EACEA - The Education, Audiovisual and Culture Exchange Agency

-Tim Clark, Editor in Chief at 1000 Words Photography Magazine serving on a panel of judges for the Google Photography Prize in association with the Saatchi Gallery, London.

So roll on 2013! Here's to yet more questioning, listening, collaborating, adding value, aiming higher, innovating and doing more with less.

1000 WORDS WORKSHOPS WITH JH ENGSTROM AND TODD HIDO IN ATHENS, GREECE, APRIL 2013

After ambitious workshops in Fez, Morocco, 1000 Words is very pleased to announce a new series taking place in Greece next year, starting with two in Athens conducted by internationally renowned photographers, Todd Hido (15-19 April 2013) and JH Engström (22-26 April 2013). The theme for these workshops is concerned with ‘Uncertainty’ - of the mind, emotions, the creative process and social issues.

Athens is one of the oldest cities and the ominous presence of the Acropolis serves as a constant reminder that modern Western thinking in the arts, philosophy and politics originated here. Today, Athens is a wonderfully exciting and vibrant metropolis, bursting with culture, nightlife and the optimistic energy of every day Mediterranean verve. An extremely visual city, it is layered with complex meaning and is the perfect setting for creative exploration.

Contemporary Greece is also of course enduring economic and social upheaval on a massive scale. The regularity of demonstrations in Syntagma Square is testimony to its citizens’ discontent in the face of an unstable present and an uncertain future and yet the vibrancy of the cultural and social scene is ripe with adventure and new possibilities.

TODD HIDO:

Todd Hido is an American photographer based in San Francisco. Hido’s photographs are often described as “revealing isolation and anonymity in contemporary suburbia.” Whether shooting houses at night, landscapes, interiors, nudes or portraits, his work exudes a poetic and often eerie aura that is singularly his own.

Hido’s monographs have been published to critical acclaim and include House Hunting, Outskirts and Between the Two. His work has been exhibited widely and is found in collections at the Guggenheim Museum, George Eastman House and San Francisco MoMA amongst numerous others.

JH ENGSTROM:

JH Engström is a leading Swedish photographer who lives between Värmland and Paris. He is best known for his influential photobooks, most notably the highly collectable monograph Trying to Dance, published in 2003, as well as From Back Home, a collaboration with Anders Petersen for which he won the Author Book Award at Rencontres d’Arles 2009. Engström is represented by Galerie VU in Paris and Gun Gallery in Stockholm. He was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2005.

His photography is marked by a distinctly subjective approach to documenting his surroundings. Born out of emotional encounters, at the heart of his work lies both an intimate connection with his subjects and expression of his own self. Critic Martin Jaeggi has spoken speaking of Engström’s pictures as having "the impression of looking at memories".

ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS:

1000 Words Workshops will take place in the studio of the New School Athens situated downtown in the district of Metaxourgeio, Athens. The workshops will be an intense and productive experience lasting five days and will consist of 14 participants. Two of the participants will be young Greek photographers who will be awarded a bursary via the New School Athens.

© Yorgis Yerolymbos

PRACTICAL INFORMATION:

The cost of each workshop is £800 for five days. Once participants have been selected they will be expected to pay a non-refundable deposit of £400 within one week. Participants can then pay the remaining amount as per the deadlines listed below. Participants are encouraged to arrive the day before the workshop begins for a welcome dinner. The price includes:

-tuition from Todd Hido/JH Engström (including defining each participant’s project; shooting; editing sessions; creating a coherent body of work; creation of a slide show; projection of the images of the participants.)
-a welcome dinner
-24 hour help from the 1000 Words team and an assistant/translator with local knowledge.

Participants will be expected to make their own travel arrangements and find accommodation, which in Athens can be very cheap for the week. We can advise on finding the accommodation that best suits you. We can also help you find accommodation at a discount. For photographers using colour film we will provide the means for processing and a scanner. Photographers shooting digital will be expected to bring all necessary equipment. Please note that for the purposes and practicalities of a workshop, digital really is advisable. All participants should also bring a laptop if they have one. Every effort will be made to accommodate individual technical needs.

HOW TO SUBMIT:

We require that you send 10 images as low res jpegs and/or a link to your website, as well as a short biography and statement about why you think it will be relevant for you to work with Todd Hido or JH Engström (approx. 200 words total). Submissions are to be sent to workshops@1000wordsmag.com with the following subject header: SUBMISSION FOR 1000 WORDS WORKSHOP WITH TODD HIDO/JH ENGSTROM.

18 February 2013: Deadline for applications
20 February 2013: Successful candidates contacted
27 February 2013: Deposit due (£400)
18 March 2013: Balance due (£400)
14 April 2013: Arrive in Athens for welcome dinner (Todd Hido)
21 April 2013: Arrive in Athens for welcome dinner (JH Engström)
15 or 22 April 2013: Workshop begins
19 or 26 April 2013: Workshop ends

IN ASSOCIATION WITH:

London Art Fair 2 for 1 ticket offer

London Art Fair is one of the UK’s premier destinations for modern British and contemporary art, bringing together 129 leading galleries from the UK and overseas.

Alongside the main fair, two curated sections focus on younger galleries, new work and contemporary photography; Art Projects and Photo50. Photo50 is an exhibition of contemporary photography featuring fifty works, curated this year by Nick Hackworth, Director of the excellent Paradise Row gallery. Entitled, A Cyclical Poem, it will bring together the work of a number of British photojournalists and documentary photographers from the 1970s to the present day including Brian Griffin, Paul Hill, Sirrka-Lisa Kontinen, Dorothy Bohm, Marketa Luscakova and Chris Steele-Perkins. The exhibition is an elliptical meditation on the idea of historical change, instances separated by eras, of congruence and difference; it considers what has changed and what has stayed the same.

The fair keeps its doors open late on Thursday 17 January, providing you with the opportunity to look at the work by over 1,000 artists whilst enjoying complimentary drinks, talks and performances.

1000 Words readers can purchase 2 for 1 advanced tickets for this evening; just enter code LAF467 when booking to activate your discount. Offer valid until midnight 31 December 2012. Book here!

Stefan Bladh

All images © Stefan Bladh, from the series Stasis.

Archive of Modern Conflict @Paris Photo 2012

A Cyanotype plant study. The world record parachute jump from 1932. Rooftops in St. Petersberg, Scott’s Terra Nova expedition. A West African king. Cumulus humiliis. An abstract composition. A Kominka dancer. An observatory. Another plant study. These are just a handful of the prints that were showcased in ‘Collected Shadows’ – a stunning exhibition from the Archive of Modern Conflict at this year’s Paris Photo.

Deftly assembled by curator Timothy Prus, the show was a gloriously eclectic jamboree that displayed all manner of photography's styles, periods and ends. Spanning works from 1850 to the present day by both anonymous and name photographers including Gustave Le Gray, Robert Frank, Bertha Jaques, Josef Sudek and Willi Ruge, and arranged in sections according to themes of earth, fire, air, water and ether, 'Collected Shadows' was richly satisfying and undoubtedly the most talked about booth at the fair.

Below is a video interview (produced by The Art Newspaper), the first half of which features Prus discussing how the archive has grown and the ideas behind the installation. It's a revealing, albeit brief, insight into the quirky mind of the collector known for his penchant for photographic oddities of the past. He is clearly as fascinated by the magic of photography as he is by the mysteries of life. After all, the collecting style is freighted with an acute awareness of the tendency for people to crow over the misery of others and the role images play within that.

Paris Photo 2012 Private Collection - ARCHIVE OF MODERN CONFLICT - JPMORGAN CHASE ART COLLECTION from Paris Photo on Vimeo.

The jewel in the crown of the exhibition was the new Bruce Gilden portraits, odd-looking sitters shot mostly on Brick Lane in London, that were hung on the outer wall of the booth. Each photograph was ingeniously paired alongside a historical work such as a wax-paper negative from 1858 showing the garden of a private house in Tehran, for example. Both images on their own were extraordinary, but their combination proved an intoxicating mix.

For those wishing to discover more, the Archive of Modern Conflict has an online shop for its books where you can browse titles from the likes of Stephen Gill and Larry Towell as well as their own fabulous journals. The latest, issue 4, comprises photographs from 'Collected Shadows'. Check out the slideshow of sample images here.

MacdonaldStrand

All images © MacdonaldStrand

Brad Feuerhelm considers the participatory aspects and iconic violence in Most Popular of All Time, a new book by MacdonaldStrand.

Having picked up the latest self-published title from husband and wife team MacdonaldStrand (Clare Strand and Gordon Macdonald), I have come away with a greater sense of what photographic practice can bring about when disseminated through the line of the pencil, darkly. As photography becomes more and more synonymous with that of conceptual art practice, the mantra of the iconic within the medium begins to permeate a greater need for understanding for our own associations with images that take on a totemic value. A photograph with 'iconic status' is an instantly recognised yet sometimes little understood visual cadence that explodes across the world in daily consummation of news and media alike. How do we recognise, process, receive, and finally retransmit its symbolic value over time? How do we train our minds to adhere to a group formula for understanding these visual markers of progress and detriment? And finally, how to we reinterpret this material and send it back out into the world to promote its niche capacity for several understandings within the visual language of the time - past, present, and future?

The works contained within the superb Most Popular of All Time invoke such questions. The project results from an online survey conducted by the artist/curator duo, whereby users were asked to name their most iconic images. These photographs have become so ubiquitous that it is hard to see their content and they have become detached from their context.From the information gathered, MacdonaldStrand took the resulting images and reduced them to line drawings with 'connect-the-dot' numbered points. Left half-finished, the image is then to be completed by the further drawing on the part of the viewer.

All colour is drained, all traces of photographic grey scale removed. It is a simple yet effective conceit to reduce photography to that of line, but also embedded within the work is the ability to promote the ‘punctum’ of its iconic status with a participatory function - it brings the viewer into a complicit rendering of line and photographic management of iconic status.

Within the works selected for re-purposing are Eddie Adams famous ‘execution’ image and Richard Drew’s Falling Man. These pictures in and of themselves capture very difficult conditions of humanity and the role of observer within. The majority of the images displayed are of a horrific base and coalesce our need to exult difficult imagery into that of lore and legend, that of description and representation which is often fraught with a tension not found in other mediums. In short, they are epic tales of pleasure and pain, ecstasy and absence.

Yet representation is not the exclusive aim within the book nor the works themselves, but rather they evoke a need to understand how we as a collective society enable these icons caught on film (or file) and how we redistribute their meaning and function as the photograph itself. The structures of violence, the poignantly horrific, and the sometimes misunderstood signifiers of our collective photographic imagination delineated by the direct act of hand on paper.

The works are also available for an incredibly economic rate, which is also clever given the material. I have purchased all images within the show for less than £100. But in doing so I understand what exactly it is I am enabling. MacdonaldStrand have chosen a crafty and intelligent way to examine and exclude some of the icons of photography through something as commonplace as a pencil. Time and the flow of chaos have been reduced to the materially manageable. 

Brad Feuerhelm

The future of photography

It's been at least six months since an institution posed the modest question, what is the future of photography? so here is the latest manifestation of that discourse. During Unseen 2012, the Friday afternoon panel discussion 'Future of Photography' examined 'what's next' in the contemporary photography landscape. Panel discussions members included Marc Feustel (Eyecurious blog), Simon Baker (Curator of Photography and International Art, Tate), James Reid (Director of Photography at Wallpaper), Christine Ollier (Artistic Director of Galerie les Filles du Calvaire), Francois Hébel (Director of Les Rencontres d'Arles Festival). The discussion was moderated by Marcel Feil, Artistic Director of FOAM.

In all seriousness, it's a highly engaging and enjoyable video, particularly the section that flags up work from the new generation of photographic artists who are making waves (think Dru Donovan, Asger Carlsen, Letha Wilson, Akiko Takizawa to name but a few) and serves to highlight the many and various directions in which the medium is headed. If you want to read a summary of the issues that came to the fore before watching click here.

Doug DuBois @Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh County Cork

All images © Doug DuBois

Tomorrow evening the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh County Cork, Ireland, will open the exhibition of works by the brilliant Doug DuBois - My Last Day at Seventeen.

In a text describing the project, DuBois ventures the following:

"Russell Heights is a housing estate of uncertain vintage that sits on Spy Hill overlooking the Cork Harbour on the Great Island in East Cork. The neighbourhood is insular: everyone seems to be someone’s family member, former girlfriend or spouse. Little can happen there that isn’t seen, discussed, often exaggerated and fiercely defended against any disapprobation from the outside.

My introduction to Russell Heights came at the invitation of Kevin and Eirn, two teenagers who took part in a photography workshop I gave at the community centre. The title of the project, My Last Day at Seventeen was uttered by Eirn when I photographed her on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. Certain photographs are made spontaneously, but most are fashioned collaboratively utilising a chosen wardrobe, setting and circumstance. These scenes are carefully crafted and stylised to evoke the narrative rhetoric of literature and film without abrogating entirely the photographic claim to depict lived experience. The portraits, similarly directed, are often tightly framed to concentrate on the anxious countenance and fragile bravado of a future not fully imagined or realised."

The photographs were made over a four year period during a series of artist residencies at the Sirius Arts Centre under the invitation of Artistic director extraordinaire Peggy Sue Amison. Collectively, the images present a somewhat fictional, somewhat documentary account of adolescence in Ireland and a coming of age story about a small group of teenagers from Russell Heights. 

The exhibition runs from Thursday 25 October to Sunday 23 December.

Cindy Sherman

What is there to say about queen bee Cindy Sherman? For 30 years she has starred in all of her photographs and yet they reveal nothing about her. For they are anything but self-portraits. Rather, her collection of pictures toss a molotov cocktail through the stained-glass window of photographic truth.

We recently happened upon this rare interview with her, produced by Art21. In it she reveals how dressing up in character began as a kind of performance and evolved into her earliest photographic series such as Bus Riders (1976), Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), and the untitled rear screen projections (1980).

Through her myriad of guises, metamorphosing from a busty Marilyn Monroe to a cowgirl to a forlorn clown, she examines issues of gender, identity and power, and explores how photography is complicit in these contructions. Often with the simplest of means - a camera, a wig, makeup, location, an outfit - but always freighted with self-reflexive irony, Sherman chosen heroines pursue this with overt anarchy energy presenting ambiguous but memorable characters that suggest complex social and cultural realities lived out beyond the frame. Having developed an aesthetic and artistic language of their own, they interrogate public images, from kitsch (film stills and centerfolds) to art history (Old Masters and Surrealism) to green-screen technology and the latest advances in digital photography.

But of course that’s not the only advance she has made. Sherman’s Untitled #96 from 1981 - more commonly referred to as 'Orange Sweater' - passed all records for photography, and was sold for $3.89 million in Spring this year. According to Art Info, the buyer was New York dealer Philippe Segalot, and the underbidder was Per Skarstedt, also a New York dealer. Christie's confirmed that this was a record for a photograph at auction, previously held by Andreas Gursky’s 99 Cent II Diptychon, which fetched $3.35 million in 2006. Sherman recently had another high profile sale, with her work Untitled #153, from 1985 reaching $2.7 million in late 2010. Needless to say, the price of a photograph should never be the measure of value but nobody can deny her stature and influence on the medium, the esteem with which she is held by critics and curators, and the prestigious collections that contain her work.

Below is another video, this time comprising a panel discussion on the occasion of her retrospective survey at MoMA that finished back in June. It features artists, working in a variety of mediums, as they consider Cindy Sherman's influence on contemporary art practice. Panelists include George Condo, Kalup Linzy, Elizabeth Peyton, and Collier Schorr. It is moderated by exhibition organiser Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography, MoMA.

Daido Moriyama printing show @Tate Modern, London

Our Associate editor, Brad Feuerhelm on the rare opportunity to create his own limited-edition, photo book with legendary Japanese photographer, Daido Moriyama.

I was lucky enough to get to the Tate Modern last week to take part in making a book with Daido Moriyama along with a bevy of other photography aficionados. The idea of the printing show has been successfully resurrected by curator, writer and Goliga Press head Ivan Vartanian for the Tate’s current show Klein + Moriyama, which in itself is a great behemoth of a dual retrospective.

Mr. Vartanian has taken his cue from the original printing show that Moriyama did in New York City in 1974 wherein he notoriously and, in perfect participatory harmony, assembled a small workshop in the commercial gallery and invited interested parties to become part of the performance of book arts selection. Members were allowed to pick an amount of Moriyama’s images to collate into their own book. A highly probable gesture to the unique and collaboration bereft of the pressures of commerce normally associated with a commercial gallery endeavour. This seemed to be a kind of citizen artist project with a nod to the happenings of the 60’s. Collaborative. Inspirational. Effective. 

On the sixth floor of the Tate Modern with its expansive views over a lovely sunny London, participants were asked to repeat the process whereby they are allowed to pick through a pre-selected amount of Moriyama’s works to collate and produce their own book on the spot with other members allotted the same time. It was a hubbub of friendly, weekend activity with museum curators milling about with the public and of the photographic enthusiasts on the same level, the level of artist. The sort of open experience is one of the many reasons the London photographic community has been greatly enabled by the Tate’s push towards photography under the tutelage of Simon Baker, chief in staff of bringing photography howling down on London, the beast tamed and now sharply in the spotlight.

Before entering the sanctity of the Tate, I had already decided to reduce my knowledge of Daido Moriyama into one image and to repeat it over and over, making a repetitive, yet completely unique object barring any other paraphoto nerds had not beat me to it in 1974 at the original staging or at the recent Tokyo happening. At $40,000 for an original copy of the 1974 book, I think I will decline to pursue its possibility. In selecting an image of lips, I felt that I selected an iconic summation of the desire in Moriyama’s work. My ultimate choice would have been the ‘stray dog’ image, which I can still envision as a single image book.

Moriyama, ever the provocateur, was clever to exclude ‘stray dog’ and the famous tights image for his pre-selection of works available in the book making process. I remember chuckling on the way in when I realised it was not there, knowing he had got the best of me under his controlled and fairly so, tyrannical application of what we could choose. The images on display were gorgeous and the second-guessing about making it a more straightforward book still swayed to repetition and the single idea/image.

After selecting your images on a card (all cleverly organised), you give the selection to a printing assistant who then goes through the process of stapling the images to a pre-made screen printed cover of which there are two choices to pick from. I went blue. The title… Menu. 

I waited while my book was assembled to have my number called out to retrieve it from Simon Baker. My Menu served, a deserved light chuckle from him at its insistence to be different and I was sent off to wonder in the big smoke for the rest of my Sunday, feeling that the experience was well worth the obscenely cheap £20 ticket. Whether I felt I collaborated or parasitically stole myself into a vain collaboration with Mr. Moriyama is another matter entirely!

Brad Feuerhelm

Antoine d’Agata

All images © Antoine d'Agata

Antoine d’Agata’s latest publication ICE continues his ongoing fascination with sex, drugs, death and dissecting taboos, finds Chloe Athanasopoulou.

Perhaps it is too soon to judge whether Antoine D’Agata’s newest incarnation, ICE, is his swan song, but undoubtedly, it is the most contextualised and revealing book he has produced so far. Refreshingly amoral, excessive beyond reason, paradoxical and seductive, his journey through the prism of the drug, metamphetamine hydrochloride or so-called ICE, is unlocked here not just by way of photography but also through extensive writing.

Alongside already familiar photographic work produced since 2005 in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, the injections of text throughout the book, such as his personal diary, emails to and from prostitutes portrayed in ICE, his editor, and his children back in France, offer a new dimension and level of complexity to his work that refrains from repetition. ICE is not an answer, but rather a multi-layered question, a circle of construction and destruction where the chronological distance between the photographs taken becomes spirally bigger together with the intensity of the pure experience. Antoine’s ambivalence between pain and pleasure, and instinctive gravitation towards the fugitive and circumstantial leaves no space for romantic notions of idealised beauty.

The protagonists of ICE are contemporary nymphs; abyssal and suffering, humane but still hard to reach and to keep hold of. Ka, the most beloved and indeed photographed of all the girls, is a contemporary Olympia, a Baudelairean Red Hair Beggar Girl, a queen, a prostitute, a cannibal, an anorexic desire and still, as D’Agata describes her, "taller than a mountain". The complex relationship between the prostitutes and the photographer is exposed through the extraordinary textual part of ICE; the shocking honesty and brutal rawness from both parts in regards to sensitive matters, such as the exploitation of the sitter, intimacy, sex and love, is far from pretentious and counteracts the judgemental and reassuring predisposition of our times.

The oeuvre of Antoine d’Agata has never been easy to digest and ICE is unquestionably his toughest body of work yet. The rigour and sheer determination of his quest reveals much of himself but uniquely, and crucially, opens up to the experience of his subjects.

Chloe Athanasopoulou

William Klein + Daido Moriyama @Tate Modern, London

Fresh from the media view of the hugely anticipated Klein + Moriyama: New York Tokyo Photography Film exhibition, which opens today at the Tate Modern, Rachel Ridge reports back on her findings and brings us a quick q&a with Daido Moriyama. Also, after the drop, are two of latest of Art.sy/Tate Shots videos.

Klein + Moriyama: New York Tokyo Film Photography is the latest in a recent rupture of thoughtfully curated photography coming out of the Tate Modern. And, following the likes of Diane Arbus, Boris Mikhailov and the 2010 show Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and The Camera, it appears to have a penchant for the candid wanderers of the world.  

So here we have two connoisseurs of the street in what is essentially two retrospectives back to back. It begins with American painter, filmmaker, and photographer William Klein (b.1928), and ends with Daido Moriyama, (b.1938). The story goes that a twenty year old Moriyama stumbled upon Klein’s seminal photo book, Life is Good and Good For You in New York, published in 1956, a daringly stark portrait of New York, which would go on to change the way he photographed from then on.

These are men who see the city as a mysterious world, that births a strange kind of existence filled with stark realities, performance, isolation, desires and nervous energy. Both shooting predominantly New York and Tokyo in black and white with a point and shoot, they seem to subsume street photography into their own brand of photographic impressionism. Quick to capture what grabbed them, their images had little time for technical expertise and appear more like throbs of instinctive impulse, that often dissolve into abstraction.

The show literally opens with a bang, with Klein’s film Broadway Light 1958, towering over you in pulsating neon flashes which cut to close ups of garish street signs, ‘Don’t walk’ and ‘Taste it’. Klein explores the city as cinema, a phantasmagoria, lulling us into a waking dream state. His work appears to be an intense investigation into these wheels of control and seduction.

Elsa Maxwell's Tory ball, Waldorf Hotel, New York, 1955. © William Klein

An interesting paradox is his heavy involvement in the fashion industry, working as a photographer for Vogue in his early career. We see enlarged pictures of models head to toe in designer clothing parading the gritty streets of New York, and a satire of the fashion industry in the film, Who are you Polly Magoo? which plays in a room looping a retrospective of his films. It’s quite hard to believe how he got away with poking fun at fashion, whilst at the same time, changing the face of it forever. In his most creative fashion endeavour he mixes photographs of models with photograms showing them interacting with moving light.

There is an inherent urgency about Klein’s practice that speaks to some kind of post war hysteria; rooms of abstract paintings, photograms, films then back to photography. A man on a manic quest for his own truth and always trying to break down the façade, he even does this with the photograph itself in huge blown up photo laminates of painted contact sheets unveiling the selection process for all to see. Laying things as bare as he can, the American dream seems to shatter slightly every time Klein clicks. The war may have been over but a new one was being waged.

The mania of Klein’s rooms pave the way for Moriyama to adopt a more sensual approach, where Klein is the rampant explorer, Moriyama, ten years his junior, is the flaneur letting his intuition lead.

Memory of Dog 2, 1982. © Daido Moriyama

Moriyama, born in Osaka but later settling in Tokyo, seems to be trying to make sense of these fragmented places, which the city poses. His democracy of vision renders real-artificial, human-animal, subject-photographer, inanimate object-nature all equal, all up for investigation. His photographs are where pre conceptions go to die. The city is merely a plethora of possibilities and he is open to them all. In the series Platform he captures different groups of people waiting for the train. We see a businessman, a granny and a housewife all coexisting on an equal plane, all having a story we can get lost in.

Moriyama’s influence, Jack Kerouac’s On the road, can be seen in the countless open-ended narratives that pour onto the walls in a stream of consciousness. Like Kerouac did with writing, Moriyama pushes the limits of photography - shooting grainy, disjointed compositions, overlapping images and over exposing. Photographs become his own subconscious imprints. In Farewell photography we see how Moriyama like Klein, uses personal expressions and distortion of light to remind us of the façade of the photograph.

The curator, Simon Baker, explains this is “a show about photographic architecture”. Staying true to Klein and Moriyama’s love affair with the photo book, the exhibition utilises this in a visually exciting way. There are vitrines full of books, issues of Japanese vintage publication Provoke. The photographs adorn the walls in grids resembling something of a free flowing book etched out on the wall. This, coupled with mammoth sized images and large-scale films create a constant flux of shapes and forms. 

Ultimately, this exhibition is an opportunity to witness how pioneering both were in breaking from the confines of the photograph to create a visual language where perception can roam freely, in turn, producing images that seem to spring from the dark recesses of our imaginations and fantasies.

Rachel Ridge 

Rachel Ridge: Do you see the relationship between you and William Klein? 

Daido Moriyama: Rather than feeling there’s any particular connection with the artist, I feel very happy and very fortunate to be able to share the same space with him. When I was in my twenties and saw Klein photographs of New York it really inspired me to become a photographer and change the way I took photographs myself.

RR: I read that sometimes you don’t look into the viewfinder when you’re shooting; you let your body take the photograph. How much do you rely on instinct and intuition?

DM: Yes. Intuition is very important and the instinct there. Sometimes if you’re in the town you might be looking one direction and you’ll just feel that there’s something happening over there and so you’ll just turn the camera and take a photo in the other direction and that is pure instinct. 

RR: Can you elaborate on how Jack Kerouac’s On the road has influenced your work?

DM: It’s not as though in every shot I take there is a bit of Jack Kerouac or a bit of Andy Warhol. When I was young I was very influenced by seeing their work or reading their work and that has somehow sunk into my subconscious and so it probably is present in all that I do but I’m not very conscious of it when I’m taking the pictures. I can emphasise with them in how they see the world, your basis stance to what’s around you.

RR: So like an intuitive remembering...

DM: It’s intuitive sometimes when you’re actually taking the photo. It can be intuitive what kind of photo you take but at the same time this basic stance to the world around you that’s the base on what you’re standing, so not quite the same as intuition. Through the lens it might be an instinctive motion to take a photo but the whole of my life and memories are acting through that one motion at that time.