Still in the 1960s, Moriyama was part of a group of left-wing photographers who were critical of Japan’s post-war westernization or, better yet, Americanization; in several of his images, for example, Moriyama photographed rows packed with American products on the shelves of Tokyo’s supermarkets. What these photographers had in common was the use of a style that intentionally broke away from the style that was conventionally accepted at the time by the photographic intelligentsia, and was identified with the expression are, bure, boke – grainy, blurry and out of focus, in reference to the three main characteristics that distinguished the group’s images. In doing so, they translated their dissatisfaction or agitation with the rapid changes of Japanese society to a visual level. However, their protest was also exquisitely artistic, and questioned the conception of photography altogether. Refusing the idea that the photographic medium could only be used to produce archival documents, through a radicalization of style these photographers were putting an accent on its image-making capability.
The are, bure, boke aesthetics were cemented and turned into legend through Provoke, a photography magazine of only three issues (published between 1968 and 1969) which, however, made the history of photography for the radical photographic content found on its pages. Not coincidentally, the magazine’s subtitle read ‘provocative documents for the sake of thought’. Although Moriyama was not among Provoke‘s founders, and only contributed to the second and third issues, he remains the most memorable and influential of the photographers who participated in that experience. But he didn’t stop at Provoke. Over the years following the magazine’s last issue, he brought the dramatisation of the are, bure, boke style to the extreme; and, more specifically, to the point that his street photographs became almost completely abstract and illegible. In 1972, the aforementioned Farewell Photography was published. Daido Moriyama’s mission was achieved: photography had been destroyed.

Discover The Captivating Work Of Acclaimed Japanese Photographer, Daido Moriyama

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