It can be hard to imagine how radical the work of Daido Moriyama would have been when he first started walking the streets of Osaka and Tokyo with a small Canon 4Sb in the 1950s and ’60s. Before the age of ceaseless documentation, carrying a camera with you everywhere was a rare thing. Even with the passage of time, Moriyama’s images, now the subject of a major exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, have lost nothing of the urgency of modern street photography’s formative decades, or the uniqueness of his way of seeing. What makes any photograph art is the ability to capture something of the everyday with a new and intense focus — to force our eye and make us see what we otherwise would have only glimpsed, or ignored. This was Moriyama’s skill. His images are kinetic and haunted. They are often infused with a harsh, sometimes menacing beauty, so grainy and oversaturated that they have the feel of cinematic noir. Looking at the works on show, which span his early images of the 1960s to the present day, there’s a feeling of the photographer’s own shock of noticing.
Take, for example, “Stray Dog”, which remains one of his best-known works. A dog, quickly framed, turns back to regard the viewer. You can feel the animal’s muscular, heavy weight — low to the ground, both wolfish and bearish and yet also pleadingly vulnerable. Its matted fur is thrown into sharp relief by the sun and its eyes catch the light in a way that suggests intense awareness, or even madness. Moriyama’s trademark high contrast black and white gives the work a sense of documentary and slight horror. Like his other images of animals — cats, pigs, dogs — it seeks to be with them at their own level. He photographs them closely, capturing both their sentience and perhaps also their wariness.
“Stray Dog” was taken during a road trip where Moriyama would often photograph from the window of a moving car, and which later became the photobook A Hunter (1972). He found the dog near a US Air Force base in Misawa in 1971, and the image, with its undercurrent of anger and defensiveness, has come to stand in for the feelings and tensions of postwar Japan, a time of intense social, economic and political change as the country grappled with the repercussions of the atomic bombs that had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the US-led military occupation. Moriyama has described the work as more of a self-portrait, likening himself to a dog that wanders and glares as he goes about his work.
Whatever meaning we may or may not ascribe to “Stray Dog”, there’s no doubt that the postwar years were highly formative for Moriyama’s aesthetic. Born in Ikeda, Osaka, in 1938, Moriyama had what he describes as an “ordinary” childhood. His father was an insurance salesman and the family moved often, perhaps seeding the rootless, peripatetic moods that can be felt in Moriyama’s practice. He began working in graphic design but found it too desk-bound, and left for Tokyo in 1961 to join the photographers’ collective Vivo, which sought to grapple with the rapid transformation of Japan after the US-led occupation. During those decades, western commercialism expanded rapidly, and its abrupt interaction with Japanese traditions resulted in changes both jarring and thrilling.
Although the collective soon disbanded, Moriyama was able to learn in terms of both style and technique from key figures such as Shomei Tomatsu and Eikoh Hosoe, the latter taking him on as an assistant. Photographers like Tomatsu, whose most famous image shows a watch frozen at 11:02, the exact time that the atomic bomb exploded in Nagasaki, saw the American influence as more of a destructive force on Japanese society. Moriyama, who was younger by almost a decade and had grown up with a mixture of cultures already present, including artists such as William Klein and Andy Warhol, tended towards a more observational tone. He was aware of the conflicts between modernisation and tradition, and yet accepted these changes with a sombre inevitability. His images capture the striking and sometimes garish appearance of western advertising, dress and signage on the streets of Tokyo: a group of youths with a James Dean-air lounging around their motorcycles in leathers and denims in Harumi, their faces overexposed to the point of being whited-out; a figure enveloped by a huge leopard-print fur coat; giant cans of mass-produced cream-style corn towering over the aisle of a supermarket.
While acutely attuned to the social atmosphere of the times, Moriyama was never doggedly political. What seemed to spur him was a sense of how drama and desire can be revealed in an ordinary instant. He has said that what he is looking for is a sense of the surreal or a reawakening of dormant memory: “My underlying thought was to show how in the most common and everyday, in the world of the most normal people . . . there is something dramatic, remarkable, fictional.”
In the late 1960s, Moriyama joined another collective, Provoke, whose manifesto rejected any concept of the photograph as an idea and instead embraced something more fragmentary and subjective. They sought images that were raw and immediate, exposing the photographer as having a bodily encounter with reality, working in a style that came to be known as are, bure, boke (grainy, blurry and out of focus). In one 1990 photograph, a woman exposes the whites of her eyeball to Moriyama’s lens. In another, simply titled “Tokyo” (circa 1971), a woman in the foreground tilts her head quizzically to look back, in a mirror perhaps, at the photographer behind her taking her picture. It’s a recursive motion, shot in a closed room with a yellow overhead light that illuminates the woman’s hair, her shoulder, and the air between them. Like so many of Moriyama’s images, it’s instantaneous, almost an accident.
But he always came back to the same subject: the city. He would wander around Tokyo, particularly areas like Shinjuku with its dense alleyways, clubs, hotels and tiny bars, shooting rapidly and instinctually. His images reflect the hard-bitten mythmaking of these streets — the particular hallucinogenic tension of cities as places where one is among strangers yet hunting for connection, where so much is available for purchase and so little true satisfaction had. In one photograph, a figure in silhouette stands before a brightly lit restaurant on a busy street, two bands of light encircling the building. There is something haunted and lonely here, amid all the fluorescence and crowds.
In photography, and in writing too, there is the difficulty of interpretation. To capture anything in an aesthetic way is to change it, often romantically. Art gives things shape, frame, perspective and, even in the depths of horror or alienation, beauty. Moriyama felt the fraughtness of these tensions throughout his career and for a time during the 1970s gave up photography, publishing Farewell Photography in 1972. He had lost faith in the medium’s capacity to shape the world and not just exploit it, and was feeling disillusioned, frustrated and destructive. He only returned to it in the 1980s. Some of this later work took on a softer palette: in “Store Opening Flowers” (1991), a large, almost perfectly round bouquet sits propped up high on a street, partly covered as if in a shroud. While still imbued with Moriyama’s aura of grimy beauty, there’s a stillness and clarity here, gentler greys and paler gradients.
Moriyama has said that for him, the three central elements of photography are documentation, memory and commemoration. Time, he reflects, has the capacity to erase memory altogether. We will all be unable to remember scenes, instances, shots taken many years ago. So the power of the photograph then is in the act of restoration, its ability to drag a moment out of the past and present it to you seemingly anew, to ask: what do you think now?
‘Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective’ is at The Photographers’ Gallery in London until February 11
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Turkish photographer Cem Doğut has won an aerial photography contest on NATO Air Command’s official X account by receiving the most number of votes on his F-16 photo.
NATO Air Command organized a contest for photographing fighter jets on its official X account. It shared a poll titled “What is your favorite aircraft photo of the year?” in which the works of photographers from four countries were voted.
In the contest, which NATO announced that it utilized its own national and freelance photographers to capture and tell its story, aviation photographer and researcher Doğut competed with aerial photographers Christian Schrik, Bartek Bera and Giovanni Colla.
Some 32,259 votes were cast in the contest, which ended on Dec. 15. Doğut’s photo of F-16s of the Polish Air Force was the most popular photo with a whopping 56.3 percent of the votes. In second place with 36.6 percent was a close-up aerial photo of French Dassault Rafale fighter jets in the Baltic by Polish freelancer Bera.
Italian Colla’s photo of an air show came third with 4.3 percent. Schrik’s photo of the Royal Netherlands Air Force’s F-35 came last with 2.8 percent of the votes.
Doğut shared the story behind his winning photo, which was taken on Oct. 31, saying, “I took the photo at a press event of NATO Air Command. F-35A aircraft of the Italian Air Force were performing a NATO Air Policing mission in Malbork, Poland. The event was held to promote this mission.”
“Turkish Air Force F-16s are currently in Romania on a similar mission. Along with Italian F-35s, the host Polish F-16s were also flying. Photographers took pictures of the planes in flight from the rear ramp of a C295 cargo plane belonging to the Polish Air Force. I took my photo, which was selected as the winner, at this time,” he continued.
Doğut has been photographing aviation and warplanes for nearly 13 years. He shared that aviation photography has become popular in Türkiye in recent years but is still in the development stage.
“It is very valuable in terms of showing that Turkish aviation photographers can produce world-class works. I hope this win will increase the awareness of this work and we will be given more opportunities in our country,” he added.
It’s a common misconception that once the sun has set you’ll have to retire your camera to your kit bag, but that’s simply not true! While light levels do dip dramatically, with a tripod, long exposures, wide apertures and a high ISO sensitivity, you’ll be able to record fantastic astro landscapes. However, you may feel a little left in the dark (pun fully intended) when it comes to the kit you’ll need to get started.
We recently caught up avid astro and seascapes enthusiast Jen Rogers, based in the stunning setting of north Devon, with a love for the outdoors, hill walking and kayaking. She’s a consultant at the University of Bath and her passion is the natural world and astrophotography.
• Elevate your starry shots with the best cameras for astrophotography
In 2020 and 2022, Jen was shortlisted for the coveted Astrophotographer of the Year award and was also the runner-up for the Landscapes At Night category in the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2022 competition.
She tells us her story, her top tips for astro landscapes, as well as the camera set-up she uses, including her favorite lenses. To see more of her fantastic star-filled shots, be sure to visit her website and Instagram.
“I was given a used Praktica camera by my parents for my 22nd birthday, and I’d just moved to Scotland to study for my PhD, where I discovered hill walking. The camera became an extension of my love of the outdoors and remains so to this day. In 2007, I had the opportunity to travel through South America and realised I wouldn’t be able to carry enough film with me, so I switched to a digital Canon EOS 450D, and have since upgraded to better Canons over the years. I now shoot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and a Canon EOS R.
“In 2010, I moved to Bideford on the north coast of Devon. I’m attracted to wild places and have spent many hours exploring the area by foot or kayak, particularly around Hartland with its spectacular cliffs and hidden coves. I like moody weather and bold colours, so I often shoot at dawn or dusk or in stormy weather.
“Then I went to a talk by astrophotographer Stephen Banks in 2018, which triggered a new passion for astrophotography. As a scientist, I enjoy a technical challenge and learning about the position of the galactic core in the sky at different times of the year. I also love shooting the Aurora and have been lucky enough to visit Iceland and Norway.
“My aim is to capture the Milky Way, star trails or Aurora in the context of the landscape, particularly over the sea. I spend a lot of time planning how to frame the Milky Way over the coastline or reflective pools on the beach.”
“My first digital camera was a Canon EOS 450D though I quickly upgraded to the EOS 5D Mark II and eventually moved onto the Mark III and Mark IV models. The Mark IV is my favourite. It’s great in low light and I’ve used the Canon format for so long it’s become intuitive, which is great in the dark. The touch screen and bulb timer are also very useful. I love it for seascapes too, which I shoot in Manual mode using Live View, making it very easy to bracket my exposures.”
“My husband bought this for me in 2019 as it is significantly lighter than my Canon EOS 5D Mark IV but has a similar 30.3MP full-frame sensor. I now largely use the EOS R at night, as the electronic viewfinder and the Focus Peaking feature in Live View make it easier to focus on the stars and also to focus stack foregrounds. I also use a Canon EF-EOS R mount adapter so I can continue to use my old Canon EF lenses on the newer EOS R mirrorless body.”
“This is my go-to lens which I use most often for landscape work. It’s perfect for emphasizing foreground, and for capturing seascapes, so it’s the lens I usually have glued to my camera in the day. I have two kit bags, one for shooting seascapes with my Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM and Canon 70-200mm lenses as well as my LEE filters, and another bag for night shots with several fast prime lenses, and my StarTracker inside.”
“This is my trusty star tracker camera mount which rotates at the same speed as the Earth in the opposite direction. Once aligned with Polaris, it keeps the stars still in the sky for long exposures to be used without capturing star trails. I use this for the majority of my Milky Way shots to give them incredible depth. In addition, I also use a Pixel TW283X intervalometer, which is essential for shooting star trails and tracked Milky Way exposures in bulb mode.”
“This is my favourite night lens. Very sharp, fast, and the Milky Way is still significantly big in shot. The majority of my favourite nightscapes are shot with this. Taking a night landscape is always a compromise between getting as much detail in the Milky Way as possible and also putting it into context within the landscape. I tend to take two shots, one of the sky and one of the foreground and then stitch them together in software for a totally sharp scene.”
“A telephoto lens may sound like a strange choice for landscapes but I actually use two of them – the Sigma 100-400mm f/5-6.3 DG DN OS | C and my Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM. Both are great for compressing the perspective, but the Sigma, with its larger zoom range, is also ideal for pictures of the moon and big wave shots at the coast.”
Palm Desert’s Tell Board Project.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MOLLIE KIMBERLING
The real history of a city lies with its residents and the memories that they share. Case in point: A new interactive installation at Palm Desert Civic Center Park showcases the story of Palm Desert’s first 50 years through photography submitted by the local community.
The 8-foot-high homage to the city is easy to find — it sits smack dab in the middle of the rose garden on the west side of the park. Built for The Party in the Park, which took place in November in celebration of the city’s 50th anniversary, the Tell Board is a visual ode to life in Palm Desert. It’s plastered with photos and will remain up for continued participation.
Volunteers stand in front of the Tell Board Project.
The installation mimics the shape of the surrounding mountainscape. One side is plastered with photos; the other features an informative timeline that details city history from incorporation to present day.
The Tell Board will remain at the park, and residents are encouraged to participate by submitting snapshots of your favorite memories in Palm Desert. To upload your photos, visit palmdesert50.com/about and scroll down to the “Upload Your Photos” button.
The Party in the Park may be over, but the festivities continue! As Mayor Kathleen Kelly explains, Palm Desert is celebrating “50 years of investment in people.” And the Tell Board certainly does that.
Summary:
Louisiana is a state filled with natural and cultural beauty, making it an ideal location for photography enthusiasts. From lush swamps and picturesque beaches to vibrant festivals and historic architecture, this southern state offers numerous opportunities to capture stunning images. In this article, we will explore the best places for photography in Louisiana and provide you with useful information to make the most of your photography experience.
Frequently Asked Questions:
1. What are the best places for landscape photography in Louisiana?
Louisiana’s swamps and barrier islands are excellent options for photographing breathtaking landscapes. Some standout locations include Jean Lafitte National Park, Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, and the New Orleans Botanical Gardens.
2. What festivals in Louisiana are ideal for photographing cultural events?
Louisiana is renowned for its vibrant festivals, which provide a great opportunity to capture the rich culture of the region. The New Orleans Jazz Festival, Voodoo Music + Arts Experience, and the Louisiana Crawfish Festival are just a few examples of photogenic festivals.
3. Which are the best places to photograph historic architecture in Louisiana?
New Orleans is famous for its historic architecture, especially in the French Quarter. Strolling through the cobblestone streets of this charming neighborhood will provide plenty of opportunities to capture beautiful images of old houses and ornate balconies.
4. What state parks in Louisiana are recommended for nature photography?
Louisiana boasts several state parks that offer beautiful natural landscapes for photography. Fontainebleau State Park, Grand Isle State Park, and Poverty Point State Park are popular choices for those looking to capture the beauty of nature in Louisiana.
5. What is the best time of year to visit Louisiana for photography purposes?
The climate in Louisiana is generally warm and humid throughout most of the year. However, autumn and spring are typically the most pleasant seasons to explore and photograph the state, as temperatures are milder, and the vegetation is lush.
Enjoy the beautiful sights of Louisiana and capture unforgettable moments through your lens!
Sources:
– www.nps.gov (Jean Lafitte National Park)
– www.fws.gov (Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge)
– www.neworleans.com (New Orleans Botanical Gardens)
– www.nojazzfest.com (New Orleans Jazz Festival)
– www.voodoofestival.com (Voodoo Music + Arts Experience)
– www.louisianacrawfishfestival.com (Louisiana Crawfish Festival)
– www.crt.state.la.us (Fontainebleau State Park)
– www.crt.state.la.us (Grand Isle State Park)
– www.lastateparks.com (Poverty Point State Park)
Read more in the Web Story: Best Places for Photography in Louisiana
