Lettre a St.Lou. Daido Moriyama Kawade Shobo Shinsha/1990/Japanese/28*288*20 Daido Moriyama is one of Japan's most internationally acclaimed photographers, and his book Letter of St. Lou / Lettre a St. Lou. (First Edition) is a collection of his photographs. After graduating from the design department of a crafts high school, Moriyama worked as a commercial designer, then as an assistant to photographer Takeji Iwamiya and Eikoh Hosoe, before setting up his own business. This book is the first edition of a collection of his work published in 1990. The small French city of Saint-Lou, where the primitive photographic technique was invented by Niépce in 1824. In a dialogue with Takuma Nakahira in Shashin yo sayonara (1972), Daido Moriyama also spoke of the ‘reality of Niepce's photography’. In his postscript, he writes: ‘It is an album of the various lights and things that I, living in 1990, see every day, and at the same time, it is a personal letter from me to Saint-Lou on that summer day, through photographs. The ordinary cityscapes and objects photographed as objects are etched with Moriyama's characteristic contrasts of light and shadow.