1972/2006 – the present
“In my ongoing photo sessions in cities, I happen to lose sight of my own mental integrity in the chaos of the streets. It is probably a kind of momentary state of confusion that arises between seeing and what is seen, the photographic session and the photo, and for me this really seems to be one of the fundamental mysteries behind the replication mechanism called ‘photography’.”
In 1972, Moriyama launched an independent magazine to show his own work. The result of walking around Tokyo and surrounding region, Kiroku featured 16 pages of grainy, contrasted photographs. The word kiroku (record) is similar to kioku (memory), a central concept for Moriyama. The first version of the magazine lasted a year, but it was re-launched in 2006 under the title Record.
Shortly to publish its 50th edition, Record is now Moriyama’s backbone – his diary in installments, made up of photographic fragments. To leaf through it is to cross the vast continent of the photographer’s life, walking around Tokyo, Barcelona, Osaka, New York, Taipei and other places. People, buildings and posters dance between the light and shadow of the cities, following their daily lives. Moriyama challenges himself sometimes, such as producing an issue in just one day, or photographing the restrictions of the pandemic. They are just ways to animate the spirit, because what matters here is the daily experience of cities, the experience that makes everyone equal.
Few photographers have understood cities so well that they can be weaved together into a single cloth. Wherever he photographs begins to look like Shinjuku, his favorite neighborhood. Overlapping focal planes, hierarchical confusion, and a profusion of clicks remind us that life is a constant flow, a diffuse, opaque and fragmented experience.
It is onto the cities that Moriyama projects his obsessions and fetishes, his crises and insecurities, his optimism and pessimism. Record epitomizes this personal and collective experience, of the public and private dimension that the photographer carries with him. It is also the recent high point of a long-lasting and challenging photographic project.