The Sage gallery in Paris offers an interesting exhibition bringing together the three masters of photography. A discussion exclusively in black and white.
In 1968, Daido Moriyama published his first book entitled Japan a Photo Theatre. This book announced one of the ambitions of the artist, which will be constant in the future – the ambition to translate into images and movements the Japanese soul. While his alter ego, the stray dog, became the symbol of a new Japan, Daido Moriyama staged the city, as a live theater where vibrating streets became a center of excitement and turmoil.
Born in Osaka in 1938, the artist belongs to a generation of post-war artists who had experienced the occupation by American military troops and the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing, and who in particular through Provoke magazine, provided the country a new “provocative material for thought.”
By wanting to reveal the atmosphere of large Japanese cities in a visceral manner, the images of Daido Moriyama capture scenes where obscurity and mystery mingle. In the places he is striding through camera in hand, he captures figures, forms, and material, inspired by Eugène Atget and Weegee about whom he declared: “Atget represents the absolute natural light while Weegee represents the artificial light.”
Atget, Moriyama, et Weegee
March 23 to May 12, 2018
Sage Paris
1 bis, avenue de Lowendal
75007 Paris
France
