BY FRANCESCA ORSI
Daido Moriyama was a booster in the late 60’s of an unconventional “on the road” Japanese photography. With an approach extremely scratchy and with sharp scrapes he revealed, as an investigator, the multifaceted and contradictory reality that appears to our eyes. Moriyama photographs the life as a mystery, like an enigma, and uses photography not to find an answer, but to put together the infinite puzzle from which life is represented. Without necessarily wanting to find the last piece.
© Daido Moriyama Tokyo, 1978, courtesy of the artist
There are special subjects that characterize his style. His contrasted white and blacks feed voraciously of everything: whether it’s a lush rose or the head of a fish, or children in the street or the naked body of a woman sitting on the bed. Moriyama is recognizable among all, he is the photographer with no apparent logic, but you can read a drawing behind every shot. The desire to instill the intrigue of life with a deliberately random and fragmented look.
© Daido Moriyama Hippie Crime, 1969, courtesy of the artist
© Daido Moriyama Highway, Shizuoka, Japan, 1969, courtesy of the artist
The CIAC of Foligno exhibits until January 23, the retrospective ‘Daido Moriyama. Visioni del mondo’. It finds its own sap in showing Moriyama’ s shots as anchors, moments that the Japanese photographer has snatched from his life, in the course of his travels around the world. His photographs draw from a very specific literature, and the imagery that is enclosed leaks out from the words written by Jack Kerouac. Those images captured from life, and of which we feel the immediate energy and thrust to meddle immediately to the whole.
In many, among young photographers, fish from the well of Daido Moriyama’s photography, making him a clear model to learn and get started from. His visceral imagery goes straight to the stomach and perhaps, for most people, this way of photographing is also a way to filter and facilitate their own task. Whites and blacks are often only scenic elements, a escamotage to fill the gaps, and another way to control the reality from which to draw the subject of the image. Moriyama instead teaches not to look for it; it’s the reality that will magically surprises you, making it appear without you realizing it.
© Jean-Marc Caimi, ‘Daily Bread’
The merit of Jean-Marc Caimi - on display until January 23 at the gallery Interzone in Rome with his project “Daily Bread” - is to use the imagery of Daido Moriyama as a starting point, not as a mere copy of the master, to be able to finally find his own style. There is the same use of contrasted whites and blacks and there is the same focus on a multiple and contradictory reality, yet, in Caimi’s shots there is also irony. Among the many elements that emerge from his work irony seems absolutely what makes it different from many others. Sharp irony, almost irreverent, that makes you smile with a hint of realism even when facing those “uglinesses” that are simply part of the whole.
About Jean-Marc Caimi
French-Italian photographer and journalist, Jean-Marc Caimi works as a
freelance for Redux Pictures. His pictures mostly cover humanitarian and
social topics. In parallel, his career follows a series of intimate and more
personal projects; in 2014 these photographs were released as a book,
"Daily Bread" (T&G Publishing). The same year he also published the book "Same Tense" (Witty Kiwi Books) with a series of images shared with colleague Valentina Piccinni.
© Jean-Marc Caimi, ‘Daily Bread’
Some of his latest documentary works include stories about the mentally ill convicted, the revolution in Ukraine, the daily life of Mafia ruled
neighborhoods in Naples, the consequences over people and environment of pollution in contaminated areas in Italy, religious pilgrimages in the era of Pope Francis, the veterans of the war in Libya, the human rights violation in Azerbaijan, the refugees from North Africa in Lampedusa, the crisis in Greece, the Zimbabwean refugees illegally crossing the South African border in search of a new life and many others.
© Jean-Marc Caimi, ‘Daily Bread’
His reportages have been published worldwide in magazines, newspapers and media such as Time, Newsweek, The Sunday Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, CNN, Al Jazeera, and many others. He’s 2014 WPO finalist, has been selected and exhibited in the 2013 Delhi photo festival, won multiple prizes and exhibited at the 2013 PAA awards in Czech Republic, included for two years consecutively (2012/13) in the American Photography prize catalogue, He won the “Biennale di Videofotografia” in Alessandria (Turin), where his work where showcased. He has been exhibited during the 2013 Format Festival in Derby (UK), at the festival Entre Margens in Portugal and in Braga at the Encontros da Imagem with the project “Daily Bread”. Photographs from the book Daily Bread in 2014 became three exhibition in Sweden (Vasli Souza gallery), Japan (Reminders gallery) and Italy (Interzone gallery). He also worked as the didactic director of a photography course dedicated to refugees and migrants living in Rome.
© Interzone Galleria | Daido Moriyama | Jean-Marc Caimi | urbanautica Italy