It is not everyday you get to meet one of your hero's, today, thanks to Akiko Hamaoka today was my lucky day. This afternoon I got to meet Daido Moriyama in his office in Tokyo. In a week or so I'll post a little interview with him. When he was young he read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and the power that Kerouac had of creating photographic images with his words influenced and conditioned Daido's photographic work. His idea of taking photos is to go beyond the reality before his eyes, it is an instinctive reaction to a stimulus. He is unable to shoot anything that he does not want to depict. His nephew, Sohey, was with us in the meeting and he says now that Daido also shoots digital and he's not that computer savy, the nephew has to enter at least 500 images on a daily basis.
One of Daido's hero's starting out was William Klein and next year at the Tate Modern the two of them will exhibit their work together. You can be sure that I will do my best to make it there.In the meantime he will be in New York in November, I will post more about that once I have the specific details.
I was asking him about his travels and he told me that he'd been to Buenos Aires, I asked if there was a book on that trip and he had his nephew leave the room and come back with a copy so in addition to the two books I'd brought with me for him to sign and the one that Akiko bought for Daido to sign for Miguel Villalobos….there was a fourth and that made me very happy to see Buenos Aires through his eyes.
Daido and Sohey Moriyama
A very happy DP and a big thank you to Akiko Hamaoka for making this magic meeting happen.
Later,
Diane