This heavy, glossy, slipcased, reprinted reinterpretation of the legendary 1972 book, Farewell Photography, brings a much-sought-after classic back into print under the strict supervision of the artist, Daido Moriyama. Together with the publisher, Moriyama worked with larger prints and chose higher contrasts, abolishing all text in order to emphasize the dynamic, broken, blurred, vertiginously tilted, starkly cropped and timeless photography reproduced here. Moriyama is one of the most respected and influential photographers today, and this book bears the testimony of his early work, with all of its alluring landmark elements. Almost resulting in mayhem, these accidentally continuous black-and-white images can feel both invasive and intimate, as they freeze the animate and inanimate world before it is gone. An overwhelming torrent of early talent by an extraordinary artist.

Daido Moriyama: Farewell Photography

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

PowerShovelBooks

In 2006, Powershovel Books initiated a public art event by handing out "toy cameras" to anyone and everyone who would take one, and exhibiting a selection of the resulting photographs. (The "toy camera" in question was a Polga, a hybrid Holga camera that used Polaroid film.) One of the participants was the legendary Japanese street photographer, Daido Moriyama--and it is that series of darkly poetic photographs that this book so lovingly collects, offering a more-tranquil-than-usual walk around Tokyo, with the distinctive details of the urban landscape that only Moriyama could capture. The peculiar photographic qualities of the Polga add a unique taste and some layers of diffused grays to the timeless art of Daido Moriyama. Daido Moriyama was born near Osaka in 1938. In 1960, he moved to Tokyo to join the eminent photographers` group VIVO, whose members include Shomei Tomatsu. Since then he has collaborated with other prominent Japanese photographers including Eikoh Hosoe and Araki. Retrospectives of his work have appeared at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among other important international venues. He continues to live and work in Tokyo.

Daido Moriyama: t-82

A gold lamé bikini under a sparkling white vest, a tropical drink with an orchid on top, a stuffed deer head, a little girl holding a Hello Kitty sippy cup at the beach, shoe samples, power cables and many a downcast glance are some of the images collected in this sleek and sexy compendium. Last year, Tokyo's esteemed Powershovelbooks handed Golden Half cameras, cult old-school half-sized cameras that were recently re-released by the Japanese company SuperHeadz, to 11 half-Japanese female models--who took hundred of pictures of themselves, their friends, their homes, travels, daily landscapes and abstract worlds. The result is a vivid, radiant, sometimes ephemeral and gently erotic review of the lives of a group of carefree young women living between Tokyo and the countries of their second halves. But far from a frivolous collection of snapshots, this volume is a revealing compendium by some very promising new talents in Japanese photography.

Life As A Golden Half

Photography & Video

Arguably the most original and influential photographer in Japan, according to noted American photo critic Vince Aletti, Daido Moriyama is known for his grainy, noirish, photographs printed in deep, dark, inky black-and-white. This volume began as "a retrospective collection of photographs on the subject of animals by Daido Moriyama" according to the publisher. However, along the way, musicians were invited to contribute, and two vinyl LPs, a CD, two pop-up albums and a menko game were added--all printed with signature Moriyama animals in unbelievably deluxe black-and-white on lush papers and boards--alongside a sumptuous booklet of straight-up photographs. The result is this exquisitely printed, ultra collectible, clothbound boxed set with falcon end papers glued into the box. Musical contributions are by David Grubbs, Dirty Three, DJ Olive, Jan Jelinek, Lau Nau, Matmos, Mount Eerie, Nico Muhly, Sanso-Xtro, The Zoo Wheel and many others. Published in a limited edition of 1,000.

Moriyama Zoo No. 1

British-born, New York-based photographer Mark Borthwick (born 1966) is famed for his blurry, sunsoaked photographs, a style that has crossed disciplines and gained him equal footing in the art, photography and fashion worlds. Borthwick came to prominence in the mid-1990s with several major international exhibitions of photography; in 1998 his self-designed publication Synthetic Voices won him the Art Directors Club (New York) Silver Prize for Book Design, and his 2004 DVD collaboration with Cat Power, Speaking for Trees, further enlarged his audience. A musician, artist and poet, Borthwick conveys throughout his work an appetite for life recorded in snatched moments of bliss and delight: rainbow-like sun streaks are common effects in his photographs, as is imagery of youthful frolics in forests. The Heart Land is conceived as an artist's book convening artworks, photographs and poems by Borthwick.

Mark Borthwick: The Heart Land