DAIDO MORIYAMA

Daido Moriyama (b.1938, Osaka) is one of Japan's leading figures in photography. Witness to the spectacular changes that transformed post WWII Japan, his black and white photographs express a fascination with the cultural contradictions of age-old traditions that persist within modern society. 

Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama’s series of 20 pictures entitled ‘Tights and Lips’ is combined with his earlier work ‘How to create a beautiful picture 6: Tights in Shimotakaido’ of 1987, which shows images depicting close-up shots of legs in fishnets. 

Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama’s series of 20 pictures entitled ‘Tights and Lips’ is combined with his earlier work ‘How to create a beautiful picture 6: Tights in Shimotakaido’ of 1987, which shows images depicting close-up shots of legs in fishnets. 

With the mix of exotic shots of legs in fishnets and images of glossy lips, Moriyama wanted to produce a collection of pictures that are undeniably erotic and inscrutable in their intention. 

By using close shots, the pictures of fishnetted legs lose their sense and proportion. The curve of a thigh or the turn of the ankle are leading to abstraction with a stab of desire. 

Providing a harsh, crude vision of city life and the chaos of everyday existence, strange worlds, and unusual characters, his work occupies a unique space between the objective and the subjective, the illusory and the real. 

Combined with the series of Lips, the pictures show a long term preoccupation with image fragmentation, forcing the eye to focus on elements that might stay unnoticed.