Daidō Moriyama

Despite his arty credentials, this gritty Japanese street master is all about hard work, says Geoff Harris.

‘I can’t photograph anything without a city… For me, cities are enormous bodies of people’s desires and as I search for my own desires with them, I slice into time, seeing the moment.’

Daidō Moriyama appears to be an eloquent but gritty monochrome street specialist, following in the footsteps of some of the greatest pioneers of postwar documentary photography, but with a particular Japanese angle. In fact, he’s a trailblazer and a disruptor, somebody whose work elicits markedly different responses. French critic Hervé Chandès cites his dark, sullen vision of urban Japan and praises his ‘aggressiveness’, while Simon Baker, photography curator at the Tate, describes his work as ‘wilfully abstract’.