Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog of Tokyo follows the charismatic photographer Daido Moriyama with a single camcorder as he wanders the streets of Shinjuku with his camera in hand as he takes quick snapshots without looking in the finder. The film even captures the moment when he takes his first digital photo. His stark and high contrast black and white images symbolize his fervent lifestyle.
Biography
Born in 1938 in Osaka, Japan, he studied photography under Takeji Iwamiya, and in 1961, became an assistant to Eikoh Hosoe. In 1964, he began working as a freelance photographer. As a part of the front line of change in the post-war photography world, Moriyama's photographs were shaky, off focus, and rough, which was not acceptable in the past. In 1968, he produced a collection of photographs, Nippon gekijō shashinchō (“Japan, A Photo Theater”). His photographs capture familiar, everyday subjects with particular focus on the dark and gloomy parts of cities that usually go unnoticed. He has frequently exhibited abroad, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
