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Lot Essay
Farewell Photography, published in 1972, was produced as a result of a conversation Moriyama had with Nakahira Takuma at Yamanoue Hotel on 2 August 1971, over a year after the dissolution of PROVOKE. Their debate, which serves as the book's text, centred on the function of photography to reflect reality. This book is an icon of its time and extant copies in excellent condition -- such as the present lot -- are rare.
In The Photobook: A History Volume 1, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger comment:
Shashin yo Sayonara [Bye Bye Photography] is the most extreme monument of the Provoke period, indeed one of the most extreme photobooks ever published. Daido Moriyama pushes both the form of the photographic sequence and the photograph itself to the limits of legibility.... Any notion of 'good' technique is thrown out the window. The pictures exhibit all the qualities of reject negatives discarded in the darkroom then retrieved from the bin. The photographic language is one of blur, motion, scratches, light leaks, dust, graininess and stains, like Robert Frank or William Klein on speed (p.298).
Following the 1972 release of Farewell Photography and Hunter, Moriyama took an extended hiatus from photography. In the late 1970s, he hit a low point -- in both mind and body -- compounded by Nakahira's sudden loss of speech and memory due to alcohol poisoning in 1977 and his mentor Yamagishi Shoji's unexpected suicide in 1979, a year after his resignation as chief editor of Camera Mainichi.
In The Photobook: A History Volume 1, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger comment:
Shashin yo Sayonara [Bye Bye Photography] is the most extreme monument of the Provoke period, indeed one of the most extreme photobooks ever published. Daido Moriyama pushes both the form of the photographic sequence and the photograph itself to the limits of legibility.... Any notion of 'good' technique is thrown out the window. The pictures exhibit all the qualities of reject negatives discarded in the darkroom then retrieved from the bin. The photographic language is one of blur, motion, scratches, light leaks, dust, graininess and stains, like Robert Frank or William Klein on speed (p.298).
Following the 1972 release of Farewell Photography and Hunter, Moriyama took an extended hiatus from photography. In the late 1970s, he hit a low point -- in both mind and body -- compounded by Nakahira's sudden loss of speech and memory due to alcohol poisoning in 1977 and his mentor Yamagishi Shoji's unexpected suicide in 1979, a year after his resignation as chief editor of Camera Mainichi.