Daido Moriyama - Akai Kutsu Vol.1 & 2 - 2019

Akai Kutsu Vol.1 & 2

Daido Moriyama
Super Labo/2019/Japanese/w18.2 x h25.6 cm

*Akai Kutsu Vol. 1 & 2* is a collection of works by Daido Moriyama, one of the 20th century’s most prominent photographers. It is still fresh in our minds that Moriyama won the Hasselblad Award—often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of photography”—in 2019. This collection, published by Super Lab that same year, is the work in question. The setting is “Yokohama.” While cities such as “Tokyo,” “Shibuya,” “Shinjuku,” “Hokkaido,” “Tsugaru,” his hometown of “Osaka,” and occasionally “Okinawa” have served as Moriyama’s “main battlegrounds” in the past, this volume is a rare collection centered on the port city of Yokohama. Osanbashi, Motomachi-Chinatown, Yamanote, the port town and its cruise ships, Yamashita Park… While the atmosphere here differs from the chaos of Tokyo, the book captures the city’s exotic “Western” and “exquisite” qualities through snapshots, landscapes, and close-ups of storefront windows. Spanning both the first and second volumes, the collection offers the first comprehensive view of the city of “Yokohama.”