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.
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.
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.
