The Japan Society is delighted to invite members to a special private view of Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective with Clare Grafik, Head of Exhibitions at The Photographers’ Gallery.

This retrospective exhibition focuses on different moments of Moriyama’s vast and productive career - beginning with his early works for Japanese magazines, interest in the American occupation, and engagement with photorealism. The showbrings together more than 200 works and large-scale installations, as well as many of Moriyama’s rare photobooks and magazines, for the first time in the UK.

This special event will begin with a drinks reception at the ground floor bar from 6.30pm, followed by the exhibition tour with Clare from 7.00pm. The exhibition will remain open until 8.00pm for continued viewing. 

For more than sixty years, Daido Moriyama (森山 大道 b. 1938) has used his camera to interrogate and revolutionise the way we look at the world with his dense, grainy images. Even today, Moriyama’s pioneering artistic spirit and visual intensity remain ground-breaking, and the exhibition traces the path of a photographer who transformed the way we see photography and questioned the very nature of photography itself. Championing photography as a democratic language, Moriyama inserted himself up close with Japanese society, capturing the clash of Japanese tradition with an accelerated Westernization in post-war Japan. With his non-conformist approach and desire to challenge the medium, his work is tirelessly unpretentious, raw, blurred, radical and grainy and has defined the style of an entire generation.

Clare Grafik is Head of Exhibitions at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. She has worked in public institutions including the ICA, Whitechapel, Hayward Gallery and National Portrait Gallery and with private collections. At TPG she has curated shows with Taryn Simon, Antoine D’Agata, Zineb Sedira, Keith Arnatt and Evelyn Hofer. Group shows include ‘The Photographic Object’, 'Photography & Collage’ and 'Double Take: Photography & Drawing'. Other projects include a solo exhibition with Bettina Von Zwehl at the Freud Museum and the group show ‘Pictures from the Garden’ in collaboration with Photo Oxford in 2023. Contributions to books and catalogues include Alex Prager's 'Silver Lake Drive' and ‘Another Country’ (T&H, 2022). She has been a Sessional Lecturer at Birkbeck College, London, has lectured at institutions including University of the Arts, University of South Wales, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

Image: Yokosuka, 1965. From Japan, a Photo Theater. © Daido Moriyama/Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation.

If you have any questions, please call The Japan Society office on 020 3075 1996 or email events@japansociety.org.uk.

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