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The work depicts mysterious strangers, animals prowling the streets, hidden alleyways, evocative

sexual advertisements, window scenes from commuter vessels, and occasionally the unambiguous

self-portrait. Throughout his body of work, there is the sense that Moriyama is capturing a feeling

of isolation.

Characteristic traits are strong black and white contrasts, grainy and unsharp images, unusualangles and compositional croppings. His sources of inspiration in the end of the 1960s and 70s

were William Klein’s street photography from New York (with its rough style and fierce graphic

language); Andy Warhol’s 

photographs express a fascination with the cultural contradictions of age-old traditions that

persist within modern society. Providing a harsh, crude vision of city life and the chaos of 

everyday existence, strange worlds, and unusual characters, his work occupies the space

between the objective and the subjective, the illusory and the real.

Moriyama takes pictures with a small hand-held camera that enables him to shoot freely while

walking or running or through the windows of moving cars. Taken from vertiginous angles or

overwhelmed by close-ups, his blurred images are charged with a palpable and frenetic energy

that reveal a unique proximity to his subject matter. Snapshots of stray dogs, posters,

mannequins in shop windows, and shadows cast into alleys present the beauty and

sometimes-terrifying reality of a marginalized landscape. His anonymous and detached

approach enables him to capture the “visible present” made up of accidental and uncanny

discoveries as he experiences them.

dan cuenta de los lados oscuros de la vida urbana, de aquello que se oculta tras la deslumbrante

escenografía consumista que la sociedad del espectáculo ha impuesto en las ciudades

contemporáneas, diluyendo las diferencias entre unas y otras. Sus obras también nos recuerdanque la mirada urbana es, a menudo, nostálgica y que por ello busca fuera de la ciudad lo que teme

que ya nunca podrá encontrar dentro.

. Hábil y experimentado captor de ese sin fin de momentos de evanescencia que la calle ofrece,

durante cuatro décadas ha ido dando cuenta a modo de relato cíclico de la heroicidad anónima de

muchos gestos cotidianos. Los protagonistas de sus fotografías son casi siempre seres anónimos:

transeúntes sin nombre que esperan, marchan o se alejan.

Estoy interesado en su forma más simplificada, Shinjuku da una mezcla de sentimientos contoda su variedad de personas. Es muy realista e intrigante

The people of Moriyama’s work are often f aceless, covered in shadow or obscured by blur

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Inclina a menudo su lente en ángulos leatorios o buscando el balance entre

los elementos, no se asusta de capturar pedazos poco atractivos del paisaje

urbano. Edificios exteriores deteriorados, redes, cebras, mallas y vallas estana

menudo a la vista. Una red de drenajes de aguas puede ser el foco de una

toma

Many of Moriyama’s images imply action of some kind has happened or is about to happen - even

if that is truly not the case. The feeling is that of drifting in and out of a scene

“I realized that pictures have the power to move people,” he says. “I never thought that

pictures could be so cool.” 

“I want to express the realness of Japan. I want to show what is really going on.” 

Daido Moriyama’s photographs possess a similar raw power: the out-of-focus, tilted frame, and contrasty

graininess lend his photos cataclysmic energy. This is not to suggest that his photos of Shinjuku are records of theplace; they’re far more personal than that. Moriyama describes his photography as gestures of his internal desire.

“Las fotografías son fósiles de luz y memoria, son la historia de la

memoria” . In rapid succession, the photographs bear witness to the virulent and unpredictable life of 

the streets, showing the contrasting mix of Asian-traditional and Western-modern, as well as

a world of new media and liberal attitudes that was penetrating everyday life. The street-

photographer Moriyama records all he encounters but pronounces no judgements; he looks

into individual faces, sees geishas and street-girls, accompanies parades, notices

architectural features and façades in seemingly random juxtaposition, peers into privateniches or looks at film posters, slogans and advertising logos with their promises. While on

the one hand the turbulence of civilization is reproduced, on the other Moriyama also wrests

from this very turbulence, time and again in still-lifes and minute details as well as

chiaroscuro depictions, calm, almost meditative moments. Thus he exploits the medium of 

photography as a pure “light-pencil” form of expression, or, in the case of the depiction of 

newspaper or sensation photos, as a means of reproduction  – copies of reality, which for 

him attain the same degree of authenticity as all the other perceived impressions.

"Una fotografía es el resultado de un

pensamiento momentáneo, con el resultado que usted

está siempre experimentando e interpretando las calles yedificios de una ciudad mediante el uso la cámara, con el

fin de ir más allá de los idiomas conocidos y el de buscar 

desarrollar otra realidad corriendo paralelas al incesante

flujo del tiempo. Si esto se logra, la imagen captada en la

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fotografía trasciende los límites de la imaginación, o el

ego del fotógrafo y se convierte en un símbolo

que significa un mundo e incluye la memoria del

tiempo ".