Daido Moriyama
Retrospective
C/O Berlin 

Drawn from an archive spanning nearly six decades, Daido Moriyama’s latest retrospective at C/O Berlin induced slow looking at fast pictures. A carefully conceived presentation of prints, books, and video installations allowed viewers to take in distinct phases of the Japanese photographer’s frenetic production, yet the barrage of images remained dizzying in its cumulative effect. Apt, given that Moriyama was a pioneer of blurry vision. 

Moriyama’s signature are, bure, boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focus) style renders the chaos of contemporary life with an immediacy that was hitherto novel in the photographic history of Japan. A small point-and-shoot was his camera of choice, with the impact of the images heightened by Moriyama’s preference for high contrast monochrome film. He photographed incessantly, often eschewing composition or, in many cases, even looking through the viewfinder. And he also preferred his images to be mass-produced rather than printed in limited editions destined for gallery walls. The more pictures the better! The more copies the better!