Thames & Hudson, London, United Kingdom, 2024. 352 pp., 270 illustrations, 8¼x11".
The second Moriyama book I got was Memories of a Dog (Nazraeli Press, 2004), a collection of essays the photographer wrote in the 1980s for Asahi Camera, a series he conceived as a regular contributor to the magazine. Each issue Moriyama provided short text/image documents that portrayed his wanderings across Japan. The essays were largely written on his train rides before and after the shoots, juxtaposed with pictures made on location. Memories of a Dog shares just the essays, understanding that they are great pieces of photographic literature in and of themselves. Indeed, I was surprised the first time I read it because I was imaging something rough like his pictures, but instead found some deep, reflective thinking about the nature of photography, place, and memory.
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I still consider both these books among my favorites today; from the beginning I’ve loved the raw, anti-photography sentiment in ’71 New York — really all his early work — and the surprisingly reflective, patient, and articulate voice found in Memories of a Dog. Together they show what I’ve learned most from Moriyama, to pursue photography in a way that is raw, relentless, and aggravated, like an assault but tempered by a reflective and emotional intelligence.
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The new book from Thames & Hudson, Record 2, reproduces a series of self-published magazines called Record that Moriyama produced between 2016-2020, issues #31-50. Each issue starts with a short piece of writing and is then followed by pictures that represent the time between the publications. In many ways, Record 2 represents so much of what I’ve come to love about the photographer’s work — dark and gritty pictures made with insatiable hunger. This compendium is beautifully produced — bound with a slipcase, the pages are rich, glossy black-and-white images, each one offering another complex, passionate photograph. I remember seeing some of the original printings of Record at Dashwood, so feel confident in saying the Thames & Hudson edition provides a lovely interpretation of the work. It is made with the same glossy production values, bound in a way that makes it a substantial, definitive archive of the artist’s work, but still represents the quick and urgent feel that embodied the xeroxes in New York City. That feel, the sense of urgency, is a lovely characteristic of Moriyama’s work, and it is an achievement to make such a prestigious, highly-produced monograph that maintains that sensibility.
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My favorite part of Record 2 is the writing. The pictures are superlative, no doubt, but there is something so rigid and stylistic about Moriyama’s approach. The short texts, however, have an informal, conversational appeal, like he’s talking to you on the train. In them we witness Moriyama reflecting on ideas developed during his friendship with Takuma Nakahira; things he learned from Bruce Davidson, Eikoh Hosoi, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Eraserhead; the COVID lockdown; and receiving the Hasselblad Award. These things clarify Moriyama’s achievement for me; he was a street photographer who made Winogrand look lazy, constantly making pictures in a dark gritty manner while watching life unfold on the streets of Japan from post-war reconstruction through the ambitious expansion of the 1970s, its emergence as a global economic force in the 1990s, and into the age of data. Throughout it all, he maintained a restless, independent voice, and created a photographic vision that feels as raw as The Ramones and as wise as Zen.
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Thames & Hudson is creating a multivolume series chronicling Record. I’ve only seen this second installment, but I am eager for more. If you really want to explore Moriyama’s writing, I still recommend Memories of a Dog, and if you are new to his work, I’d really encourage you to find his earlier books. Nevertheless, Record 2 is another testament to the mastery and depth of the photographer’s work and accomplishments.
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