Goshogawara

In 1967 Daido Moriyama brought out his first book, “Japan: A Photo Theater”, which announced a rough, blurred, and out–of–focus look and a street–savvy subject matter that came to characterize the era named for Provoke, a short–lived journal that Moriyama helped to found. He spent the next several years prowling Tokyo subculture hangouts, creating photographs that artfully drain the glamour from postwar prosperity. Then Moriyama went to rural Japan, where Western–style urbanization had not yet fully taken hold. Maintaining his signature grainy, dramatic style, the photographer concentrated on intersections of tradition and modernity in the small northern town of Goshogawara, the home of technology giant Toshiba.