Daido Moriyama (b. 1938, Ikeda, Osaka) Daido Moriyama is a Japanese photographer noted for his images depicting the breakdown of traditional values in post-war Japan. Moriyama studied photography under Takeji Iwamiya before moving to Tokyo in 1961 to work as an assistant to Eikoh Hosoe. He produced a collection of photographs, Nippon Gekijo Shashincho, upon the suggestion of legendary editor of Camera Mainichi Shoji Yamagishi who encouraged many photographers in the 60s and 70s by giving them exposure. Nippon Gekijyo Shashincho, which showed the darker sides of urban life and the less-seen parts of cities, set Moriyama’s career out as a promised artistic career. In these early photographs, Moriyama attempted to show how life in certain areas was being left behind the other industrialized parts. Moriyama's style is synonymous with that of Provoke magazine, an experimental magazine which he founded in 1968 with the photographers, writers and critics Yutaka Takahashi, Takuma Nakahira, Koji Taki and Takahiko Okada. The short-lived magazine of 3 issues with the subtitle (translated) “For the Sake of Thought” held the mantra 'grainy/rough, blurry, and out-of-focus’ which became Moriyama’s signature he is internationally acclaimed for. Moriyama's influences include Seiryū Inoue,Shōmei Tōmatsu, William Klein, Andy Warhol, Eikoh Hosoe, the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, the dramatist Shūji Terayama, and Jack Kerouac.
Moriyama has received a number of award, including but not limited to the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award in the Lifetime Achievement category, the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Chevalier, the Hasselblad Foundation’s International Award in Photography and the Asahi Prize. His work has been featured in countless exhibitions both in Japan and abroad, and can be found in important public collections such as Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.