View allAll Photos Tagged existential
Does anyone with a dreary existential novel need some cover art?
At Governor's Park in Tallahassee, FL.
What looked like the Sky News lads waiting patiently across from Parliament ready to interview any passing MP just in case a few hundred of us Tour de France watchers got blown apart.
Edwin used to pose nude, in motel rooms... according to him. He didn't want his face to be captured for fear that the hollow-earth dwelling draconians (reptilian race) would learn his whereabouts and take his life.
Thank you, Liz! Our beautiful cranes came finally -- truly snail mail. sometimes it takes a little longer for things to get to certain parts of Montana. I love them both. it was difficult to tell which one was for me and which was Tim's -- but we settled on the orange for me, the red for Tim. Here, my crane is considering its shadow. It is thinking about what makes the shadow, how will it know when it is facing it's shadow -- will it be like a reflection in a mirror? Or will it be different somehow, like brush-strokes on a large wall? My crane wonders, "Will I be wide open enough to befriend my shadow? Or will I close my heart when I recognize the darker part of me on the other side of the road?"
Liz, thank you!!!! I love these little cranes! they have sparkled a waterfall of creative thought for me today, pulled me out of my doldrums, engendered philosophical questioning and I'm sure will give birth to more and more as the days flow on.
Tim likes the red one and I -- I went for the orange bird. Orange - the color of Buddha's smile. The color of a Boddhisatva's aura. The color of harvest, of deep sunlight, of life, energy, Qi ... that one jumped out and fluttered into my heart as soon as I opened the envelope.
This series of paper crane images are for Liz's (Eshu's) amazing Paper Crane Project. Please check it out -- it's going to be something even more wonderful as more and more people receive their cranes, made by Liz, and share what their cranes are doing once out of the package!
Part One
Peeled Apples
Jackie Collins Existential Question Time
Me and Stephen Hawking
This Joke Sport Severed
Journal for Plague Lovers
She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach
Facing Page: Top Left (Acoustic)
Marlon J.D.
Doors Closing Slowly
All Is Vanity
Pretension/Repulsion
Virginia State Epileptic Colony
William’s Last Words
Part Two
Motorcycle Emptiness
Your Love Alone Is Not Enough
No Surface All Feeling
You Love Us
Tsunami
La Tristesse Durera
Faster
If You Tolerate This.........
Little Baby Nothing
Australia
You Stole The Sun From My Heart
Motown Junk
Everything Must Go
Autumnsong
A Design For Life
That's what the pink face is talking about, anyway... this is in the cove at Port William in Cornwall.
Seen at a prominent junction near San Telmo, Buenos Aires, Wall grafitti in Spanish language with an existential message which translates roughly to 'we are the species in danger of extinguishing everything'
iancrean.photodeck.com/-/galleries/encountered/-/medias/0...
👑 Senses : 👀 Vision 👆 To Touch 💃 Proprioception 👂 Hearing Equilibrioception 👃 Smell ♨️ Thermoception 👅 Taste
⚡ Intelligences : ️ Spatial Intelligence
⛹️ Kinesthetic Body Intelligence
👨👩👧👦 Interpersonal Intelligence
🌲 Ecologicalist Naturalist Intelligence
️ Verbal-linguistic
🔭 Existential Intelligence
📋 WHAT :
️ eXploration (1) West Coast {USA}
🌟 West Coast {USA}
💫 United States of America/America World
🌌 City/Nature Galaxy
✨ eXploration Universe (️)
📝 Type : Ground eXploration
🎨 Style : eXploration of the west coast of the united states
🔊 Language : International (🇬🇧 description in English, but comprehensible by the whole world)
️ You can use your playlists as filters, to find what you're looking for exactly : www.youtube.com/channel/UCpvj7oecmX3AsJT6R0JP2pQ/playlists?
⚠ The items are sorted by the most appropriate categories. But can not be completely exhaustive on social networks. You can use our site or our application. If you want total exhaustiveness and much more.
📏 HOW MUCH :
👑 8 Senses
⚡ 6 Intelligences
WHO :
🎥 Filmed by LG
📡 Posted by LG
📼 Video made by LG (Windows Movie Maker 2017)
© Etoile Copyright
⚠ The description may no longer be up to date. Due to human discoveries and improvements. Pay attention to the date of publication and creation. Even works of art suffer the outrages of time
❓ WHY : To eXplore the west coast of the united states
📍 WHERE : West Coast (🇺🇸 United States of America)
🕓 WHEN : 12 June 2011
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Inspired by Drew Wilson
Tripod was set up in the trunk with me scrunched in the back holding it steady.
This picture is all thanks to craig.
I have done nothing today except have an existential crisis about the fact that I just wasted a whole day and my life is merely a collection of days so how could I waste such precious time? Then I duct taped myself up because I wanted to be a particularly ridiculous looking warrior princess. Now I am going to have dinner with Jacob in the desperate hope that he injects some sanity into my day.
indie rawkers are having existential crises all over the damn place....
.... of course, I welcome the soul-searching with raw, uninhibited funny bone tingle. As long as it means random phrases will continue to crop up on my album covers / inserts / cds.
nterpretant is trifiss or trifissible. It is very easy to distinguish the interpretant as actually acted upon from the interpretant as announced in the sign or as representing the sign to be a sign; but it is not so easy sharply to distinguish these two from each other. In the actual interpretant has to be divided into the actual interpretant in these features in which it is a determination of the field of representation & the actual interpretant in those features in which it is acted on by the sign. The representative interpretant is either the interpretant as the sign designs [?] it to represent the sign to be related to its object, the interpretant as it actually does represent the sign to be related to its object, and the interpretant is it ought to represent the sign to be related to its object. For example, a proposition or other asserting sign, such as a portrait with a legend telling of whom it is a portrait, which I call a dicisign, in itself as asserting, intends its interpretant to represent its immediate or internal object as being really related to its external object
Tango III (1986)
Artist: Lena Cronqvist (Swedish - born 1938)
Lena Cronqvist is a prominent figure in Scandinavian art. For sixty years she has created life stories through paintings, graphics, sculptures and textiles. She delves into the unpleasant aspects of childhood, motherhood, illness and loss. Here, semi-conscious young women cling to middle aged men in an enigmatic dance.
Cronqvist's art is autobiographical. She draws material from her own personal experiences, but transforms these into universal narratives of what it means to be human. She confronts the viewer with various existential themes. Faced with her images, we can feel the unpleasantness, anxiety, pain and empathy.
The autobiographical has gained renewed relevance in recent years in "reality literature" with Karl Ove Knausgård's novel series My Struggle (2009–2011) as one of several striking examples. Cronqvist has had this focus since she made her debut in 1965. Using her own life as a starting point, she has created a personal and recognisable world of images. The series based on mental illness, problems related to motherhood and the loss of parents stand as emblematic images of life and death.
Frieze of life
As an 18-year-old, Cronqvist visited Oslo and the Munch Room in the National Gallery. This encounter with Edvard Munch's art made a deep impression and set her on a quest for an art that conveys the journey of life. With Munch in mind, Cronqvist's art can be seen in the context of a frieze of life in its depictions of the child, the young woman, the relationship between man and woman, the woman as mother, the role of the artist, illness and death. The theme of death in the works known as the "death series" bears a striking parallel to Munch's images.
Self portrait
In line with the idea of self-revelation, the self-portrait plays a central role in the art of both Munch and Cronqvist. The repeated examination of one's own face contains interpretations of the self, marked by the passage of time. Cronqvist's self-portraits provide insight into life experiences related to childhood, motherhood and the role of the artist. Representations of mother and child are one of the core themes in her art. The relationship is portrayed without closeness or warmth, strained and on the verge of terror. Who will break down first? In this motif she draws on art history's representations of Madonna and the Child. The reference to art history helps give the images from everyday life historical depth.
A way of protesting
In 1969, Cronqvist suffered postpartum psychosis and was admitted to St. Jörgen's Psychiatric Hospital. Her stay there led to a series of paintings that dealt with the traumatic experiences of involuntary admission, medication and isolation. Should we view these pictures as a form of protest? The autobiographical aspects of pregnancy and childbirth also become political here. The use of her own life, together with a strong social engagement, allows Cronqvist's art to be seen in the context of the work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo: Kahlo also appears as a direct reference, for example in the self-portrait of Cronqvist in the role of the artist entitled Ibland tänker jag på Frida K (Sometimes I Think of Frida K.) from 1986. Both artists have turned their own experiences into universal and political life stories.
______________________________________________
www.visitoslo.com/en/articles/national-museum/
On 11 June 2022 the new National Museum opened in Oslo. This is the largest museum in the Nordics. The new museum now consists of the collections of the former National Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Norwegian Museum of Decorative Arts and Design.
The new museum has a permanent exhibition of about 6 500 objects. Design, arts and crafts, fine art as well as contemporary art will be exhibited alongside each other. As such, the permanent exhibition highlights interesting connections between different collections that previously have been on show at three different museums. Additionally, audiences will be able to see the most famous paintings by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, including The Scream (1893) and Madonna (1894).
The building was designed by Kleihues + Schuwerk Gesellschaft von Architekten, with emphasis on dignity and longevity over sensationalist architecture. Great care was given to achieve a balance with the museum’s surroundings and the existing monuments in the area, such as Oslo City Hall and Akershus Fortress.
The most eye-catching feature of the new museum is the large, illuminated exhibition hall on top of the building. It will be used for temporary exhibitions.
The rooftop terrace offers a unique view of the inner Oslo fjord. The square in front of the main entrance has become an urban meeting place, with benches and a café that invites you in to take a rest.
www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/visit/locations/the-national-mus...
news.artnet.com/opinion/new-national-museum-norway-2129606
www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2022/06/14/what-to-expect...
...
Progetto Arcevia 2.0/12
In 1972, Italo Bartoletti initiated Progetto Arcevia, a vision of an existential community which simultaneously enriched the local community of Palazzo d’Arcevia (Italy) while at the same time providing a site for creatives – artists, philosophers, architects – to come together and collaborate.
40 years later, Bartoletti’s vision has been embraced by a group of young London-based designers, Unit +. In September 2012, five members of Unit + journeyed to Riserva Privata San Settimio, the very site that Bartoletti first cultivated for Progetto Arcevia, and which is still owned by his family today. Using experiential and live mapping techniques across a range of different media (conceptual documentaries, sketches, models and a fairy tale inspired comic book), Unit + explored, documented and analysed their impressions of the site.
Through their dynamic engagement with all aspects of the Riserva, they experimented with colour-coded navigation systems, a proposal for a ‘floating’ meditation room and a towering sundial. Through the support and enthusiasm of Bartoletti’s family and the Riserva, Unit + will return in Spring 2013 to initiate these projects.
Crucial to Progetto Arcevia 2.0/12 is the fact that the fundamental ideals remain the same; Unit + are committed to operating as “a thought factory and creativity lab”, a team that values collaboration and cooperation. Their work at the Riserva in 2013 represents not only a continuation of one man’s vision, but the revitalisation of concepts that are intrinsic to collaborative design.
Cask-ale fan and award-winning home-brewer Alan Hew, during the...
5th annual Chesapeake Real Ale Festival, at the...
Baltimore (downtown), Maryland, USA.
18 October 2008.
***************
▶ Festival sponsored and organized by the Baltimore chapter of the Society for the Preservation of Beer From the Wood.
***************
▶ Photo and story by Yours For Good Fermentables.com.
▶ For a larger image, type 'L' (without the quotation marks).
— Follow on Facebook: YoursForGoodFermentables.
— Follow on Instagram: @tcizauskas.
▶ Camera: Canon PowerShot SD400.
▶ Commercial use requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.
" E is for EXIT " ...
i had a really weird/cool image in my head for Existential, but no where
near the amount of time to do it tonight. So instead you get an SOOC shot,
something i havent done in quite some time.its always hard for me to take a
shot and NOT do at least a little something to it. Thankfully with the 10-22mm lens
it makes it interesting enough that i like it as is.
Over the last couple weeks i have been thinking alot about how people
on Flickr, or any internet site actually, Develop these alter egos. Its as if
they become a different person because they either ... A. think nobody
will ever know any different, so why should they be genuine?
Or B. they actually believe that what they say and do there renders them
completely faultless, because ..." its just an internet site".
Everybody is accountable.and if you think you arent, you are pretty damn stupid.
Yeah,i am pretty Dramatic in alot of my imagery. I love emoting
for the sake of the image,and playing characters and scenarios.
Am i really a Crazy,pissed off screaming bald guy with an Axe all
the time in my normal life? No. Not externally.
I keep so many things bottled up in real life,that when i get to release
them here,in an image, its theraputic.
But its never faked. anything i have portrayed, from the sad and alone,
to the agony and the anger, have all been because i KNOW what that feels like.
And if i ever get to a point that people think i am full of shit, i hope
very much ,that somebody has the equipment to call me on it.
But if you do, be prepared for a debate. :P
BRAGS : (dammit,i missed yesterdays)
Got a kickass mask, which will debut shortly.
its friday,and im going to have some REAL food and Booze!
made $85 in metal money, so i bought 5 new Dvds
Stephen Hawking’s dead. Martin’s having a breakdown. And Ellie? She’s feeding the fish.
When Martin hears that the world’s greatest scientific mind has died, he’s tipped over the edge. Who will figure out where we came from, and why we’re here?
Lucky for him, chance – or destiny – finds him in an aquarium with Ellie, a PhD student studying astrophysics. As the fish swim in circles, so too do these strangers, running through science, philosophy and theology as they search for the meaning of life – and whether there is such a thing at all.
Existential Fish & Dread is a philosophical comedy drama that deals with vast, unanswerable questions through the story of a very unlikely friendship. It explores the impact of genuine human connection, and makes those existential feelings just a little more bearable.
London Pub Theatres – “…clever, moving & well performed” ****
Theatre T – “A well structured walk-through of the human condition” ****
Within Her Words – “…perfectly timed, with a finesse in its script that heightens it from a simple 2 hander…” ****1/2
Gwenan Bain - Director
Martha Reed - Playwright
Steph Hartland - Producer
Progetto Arcevia 2.0/12
In 1972, Italo Bartoletti initiated Progetto Arcevia, a vision of an existential community which simultaneously enriched the local community of Palazzo d’Arcevia (Italy) while at the same time providing a site for creatives – artists, philosophers, architects – to come together and collaborate.
40 years later, Bartoletti’s vision has been embraced by a group of young London-based designers, Unit +. In September 2012, five members of Unit + journeyed to Riserva Privata San Settimio, the very site that Bartoletti first cultivated for Progetto Arcevia, and which is still owned by his family today. Using experiential and live mapping techniques across a range of different media (conceptual documentaries, sketches, models and a fairy tale inspired comic book), Unit + explored, documented and analysed their impressions of the site.
Through their dynamic engagement with all aspects of the Riserva, they experimented with colour-coded navigation systems, a proposal for a ‘floating’ meditation room and a towering sundial. Through the support and enthusiasm of Bartoletti’s family and the Riserva, Unit + will return in Spring 2013 to initiate these projects.
Crucial to Progetto Arcevia 2.0/12 is the fact that the fundamental ideals remain the same; Unit + are committed to operating as “a thought factory and creativity lab”, a team that values collaboration and cooperation. Their work at the Riserva in 2013 represents not only a continuation of one man’s vision, but the revitalisation of concepts that are intrinsic to collaborative design.
👑 Senses : 👀 Vision 👆 To Touch 💃 Proprioception 👂 Hearing Equilibrioception 👃 Smell ♨️ Thermoception 👅 Taste
⚡ Intelligences : ️ Spatial Intelligence
⛹️ Kinesthetic Body Intelligence
👨👩👧👦 Interpersonal Intelligence
🌲 Ecologicalist Naturalist Intelligence
️ Verbal-linguistic
🔭 Existential Intelligence
📋 WHAT :
️ eXploration (1) West Coast {USA}
🌟 West Coast {USA}
💫 United States of America/America World
🌌 City/Nature Galaxy
✨ eXploration Universe (️)
📝 Type : Ground eXploration
🎨 Style : eXploration of the west coast of the united states
🔊 Language : International (🇬🇧 description in English, but comprehensible by the whole world)
️ You can use your playlists as filters, to find what you're looking for exactly : www.youtube.com/channel/UCpvj7oecmX3AsJT6R0JP2pQ/playlists?
⚠ The items are sorted by the most appropriate categories. But can not be completely exhaustive on social networks. You can use our site or our application. If you want total exhaustiveness and much more.
📏 HOW MUCH :
👑 8 Senses
⚡ 6 Intelligences
WHO :
🎥 Filmed by LG
📡 Posted by LG
📼 Video made by LG (Windows Movie Maker 2017)
© Etoile Copyright
⚠ The description may no longer be up to date. Due to human discoveries and improvements. Pay attention to the date of publication and creation. Even works of art suffer the outrages of time
❓ WHY : To eXplore the west coast of the united states
📍 WHERE : West Coast (🇺🇸 United States of America)
🕓 WHEN : 12 June 2011
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Yes, I know, this is a riveting photo quietly evoking the existential isolation of the modern condition. Or maybe an accident.
Existence and Her Counterparts, 35mm colored experimental film and sculpture. at Existential Energy
Facebook . Twitter . Tumblr . Cargo . Old Flickr .
An 'existential crisis'? How John Kelly reacted to Donald Trump's threats against North Korea
www.biphoo.com/bipnews/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/USA-Bra...
#BiggestOnlineNewsUsa, #BreakingNewsUsaOnline, #DonaldTrump, #LatestNewsOnline
John Kelly, Donald Trump’s chief-of-staff, appeared to go through an “existential crisis” on Tuesday, social media users joked, as he listened to the president’s address to the UN General Assembly.
Mr. Trump used his maiden address to the world’s leaders to escalate...
Craig Jacobson, director of the dystopian sci fi film Elliot. More info here: www.indiegogo.com/projects/elliot-a-dark-dystopian-thriller
045
Tuesday, July 17th, 2018
Fortune Brainstorm Tech
4:45 PM
THE NEW BATTLE FOR TRAVEL
The world’s most-visited travel website rakes in billions of dollars of revenue for its parent company (the former Priceline Group) but faces an existential threat in Airbnb—and a constant competitor in Expedia—as the travel market expands to include home-sharing.
Speaker:
Gillian Tans, CEO, Booking.com
Interviewer: Michal Lev-Ram, Fortune
Photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune
044
Tuesday, July 17th, 2018
Fortune Brainstorm Tech
4:20 PM
WHAT IMPACT WILL AI HAVE ON HUMANITY?
Artificial intelligence is emerging as an enabler of both our greatest potential and our worst tendencies. How will humans ensure that one of technology’s greatest advancements is used responsibly? A dialogue about the precarious balance between human and machine.
Speaker:
Dr. Mike Capps, CEO, Diveplane Corp.
Additional speakers to be announced.
Moderator: Marissa Mayer, Co-founder, Lumi Labs
Photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune
G’dye, it’s what they say in Awstrayliah.
Slyvster Stalonioni has emerged from the jungle, where he has sojourned and done personal existential things. “Ah can’t talk about them...” he says “without breaking deeply meaningful vows what ah have sworn, then ah would have to take maself out, like; it would be messy.”
“I understand...” says Gormley, who doesn’t, actually, but is wisely afraid to say otherwise.
“Yah, you are wise...” says Slyvster.
As it happens, Slyvster has taken on neap-power. “Ah am transformed. Ma mind occupies a higher plane. Ah have been eating ants.”
“My word !” says Gormley, aghast. “Why, oh, why ?”
“They are communists...” says Slyvster darkly. “They must be defeated. Ah see this in visions what ah have when ah eat them...”
Of course, Gormley Trousers is an agent of Sir Picanuper (me, yes) and knows the secret invocations that will reveal if Slyvster remains loyal. He speaks them, and Slyvster falls silent. Yes ! He answers Gormley’s urgent questioning correctly. For while he sojourned in the jungle, the mighty jungle, Slyvster imbued the power of neaps, by osmosis probably, and is a fearsome beastie. Gormley releases Slyster from his trance.
“Come !” says Gormley. “We shall journey to the abode of Sir Picanuper and you will join him in his renewed quest to bring love and happiness to all.”
“Oh, well, er..you see, the ants have programmed me to cough cough Sir Picanuper...they interfered with ma lateral synapses...”
“We have the antidote.” says Gormley, firmly.
Slyvster laughed gaily.
Walk Tall !
The enigmatic Japanese photographer, who took some of the 20th century’s most compelling images, is finally getting his first retrospective in the UK - and Switzerland. ‘Yes, it’s a bit late,’ he tells our writer
Charlotte Jansen
It isn’t easy to get to know Daidō Moriyama. The Japanese photographer, 85, answers my questions from his home in Tokyo via an interpreter, and is quick to bat off personal questions. “Photographers can only take pictures,” he shrugs.
But Moriyama has done far more than take pictures. Although best known as a street photographer, he has pushed the form to its limits, interrogating what photographs are, how they are experienced, their ethics and effect. He is also behind some of the most iconic and influential pictures of the last 50 years – from closeups of fishnet stockings to portraits of stray dogs they are regarded as lyrical, symbolic expressions of the postwar era in Japan.
“He is shy, inconspicuous, and concentrated. He is a real brain – very articulated and well-read, who speaks in elegant, metaphoric ways,” says Thyago Nogueira, the curator of a rare retrospective exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery that gives an unprecedented view of Moriyama’s dazzling work.
The show is a riveting, rapturous exploration of the enigmatic and prolific photographer, spanning from his earliest works in the late 1960s to today – he continues to go out with his camera, and a cigarette. “Although I have some constraints, including my health, I want to take as many photos as possible each day.”
Moriyama set about photographing the world not as it was but as he saw it – a confused, chaotic and fragmented reality.
Photographs are presented in myriad ways: at times completely overwhelming the viewer. There are slideshows on projectors (some more than an hour long), installations of images covering entire walls, magazine and book spreads, and sequences of glorious prints, mostly in black and white, changing in scale. In their various incarnations, with repeated images amounting to a kind of neuroticism, the photographs have a relentless pace. “They are a punch in the stomach,” as Nogueira puts it.
Moving back and forth between decades, the black and white film imbuing the images with a kind of timelessness, Moriyama contests photography as a form rooted in a moment or place. His photographs articulate something else, they palpitate with mystery – the great inexplicable essence of life. Perhaps this is why he is reluctant to speak for the images.
Moriyama was born in Osaka (then Ikeda), Japan, in 1938. “I was raised in a very ordinary way. My father was an office worker, and my mother was a housewife,” he says. His childhood wasn’t easy. Against the backdrop of US occupation and the second world war, home life was punctuated by loss. A twin brother died when Moriyama was two. The family moved often for his father’s work, before his early death. “I did not fit in at school. I lost my father when I was young. But I have always loved to draw so I became a designer through an acquaintance.” He apprenticed at a graphic design studio. His first photographs, he recalls, were of the family dog. In a later series “Memories of a Dog”, Moriyama returned to places of his childhood, to photograph his memories.
In 1961 he moved to Tokyo to pursue a dream of becoming a photojournalist, like his sensei, Shōmei Tōmatsu – Japan’s pre-eminent postwar photographer. “I became a photographer because I found the photographers I worked with very sporty and cool – and I guess I was never cut out for desk work,” Moriyama says wryly.
From early staid, documentary, journalistic-style images, mostly shot at the American base at Yokosuka (some of which are presented at the Photographers’ Gallery’s show) Moriyama’s approach quickly evolved into an expressive, subjective style that evoked his own experience of the world. He was invited to join Provoke – a collective of young photographers determined to revolutionise photography – by Takuma Nakahira, a photographer and critic, who died in 2015. “Takuma Nakahira was then, and still is, my only friend and my only rival.”
Provoke published just three issues of a visual manifesto between 1968 and 1969, but they had a profound effect. Japanese critics ridiculed the group’s lack of technical skills as “are, bure, boke” (“grainy, blurry, out-of-focus”). These terms were later reclaimed to describe the style pioneered by Moriyama. But, he says, “I never consciously shot that way, nor did I care.”
Moriyama set about photographing the world not as it was but as he saw it – a confused, chaotic and fragmented reality. There is a furious urgency to the pictures he took between 1968 and 1972: black and white photographs of everything and nothing, of underground kabuki actors and other avant garde artists and performers, erotic scenes, portraits of animals and street life, photographs of photographs, and of TV screens and newspaper headlines – precursors to screenshots and reels. “I was strongly inspired by William Klein’s books of New York, Moscow, Rome, Tokyo, published when he was still young. It was something in particular that I saw in his photographs that seemed to connect me to my own photography.”
Questioning the purpose of photography so deeply led Moriyama down a dark road.
Moriyama’s photographs have become a testament of a tumultuous time in Japan, conveying a sense of the grim and gritty reality of the underbelly of the city in grainy images. “I understood the social atmosphere at that time, but personally I had no interest in politics,” Moriyama reflects. Many of these images were originally shot as photo essays for magazines – it was the golden age of the Tokyo publishing industry, and magazines were museums for photography as it became a new artistic form. The pictures were later printed again, sometimes at different scales, reshuffled and reordered, and compiled into the photobooks Moriyama is famous for – such as his acclaimed work, A Hunter, shot from the window of a car as Moriyama hitchhiked around Japan. “When I am going along the road, snapping the shutter as I read each moment, I become at times a poet, a scientist, a critic, a philosopher, a labourer, or a politician,” he said.
A less familiar, groundbreaking series of work on show at the Photographers’ Gallery is a monthly column Accidents produced throughout 1969 for a mass media publication. Each series took on a different aspect of photography and its exploitation by the mass media – a poster of a car crash designed to shock and scare; photographs of TV screens and newspapers in Japan in the week after JFK’s assassination. It shows Moriyama’s concern with the ethics of photography and its exploitative nature.
But questioning the purpose of photography so deeply led him down a dark road. In 1972 Moriyama published “Farewell Photography”, a swan song to his chosen medium, a mashup of old negatives, scraps and prints gathered from his archives and thrown together. Photography, Moriyama realised, wasn’t going to change the world as he had once believed.
He suffered depression and became addicted to sleeping pills. It was almost a decade before he picked up the camera again, when he was commissioned by two editor friends concerned for his well being. Just as the camera had plunged him into an existential void, it pulled him back from the brink of self-obliteration.
“Moriyama spent his life asking a basic, fundamental question: What is photography?” Nogueira says. “He never answered that question, but his life’s work is a constant and honest response to that.”
Today, Moriyama is humble about his achievements. “I am happy to know that many people around the world have been exposed to my photographs and photo books,” he says. Photographing daily for so many decades, “there is nothing that has not already been taken – each photograph becomes a great cycle. It is connected to the past and to the future – and that is why there is the most reality in the current photograph that captures it.
“Beyond the photographer, the work returns to society – and that is the most powerful force of photography.”