Catching eye, catching mind

Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery presents Catching Eye, Catching Mind – Solo Exhibition of Daido Moriyama. The exhibition will feature 80 works from different periods in the artist’s career, from 1971 to the present day, including his most iconic photograph, Stray Dog (1971).

Born in 1938 in Osaka, Japan, Daido Moriyama is one of the leading figures in postwar photography in Japan.

Moriyama’s early photographs appear exceptionally grainy and often lean towards abstraction with their blurring of figures. These early works include Moriyama’s most famous photograph, the iconic Stray Dog from 1971. Often called his unofficial self-portrait, Stray Dog has become a metaphor for the artist himself. Moriyama has never had a fixed location for his shooting; rather, he wanders the streets, lingering here and there as if searching for food. He once jokingly described his way of street shooting, “I’m shooting as if a dog is excreting in the street.”

He adopts his uniquely grainy, blurry and out-of-focus style of aesthetics and experiments with techniques in the dark room. The images might be unclear and ambiguous but this is exactly how his experience at street level impacts him. In recent years, in his travels to international cities, Moriyama continues to document street scenes and cityscapes in a similar manner – seeking inspiration in everyday life. His interpretation of this “fleeting reality” of his surroundings shows a unique side of each city he visits. Wandering the streets, Moriyama captures not only moments in time, but also an emotional, characteristic of a city, each full of its own anxieties, desires, and charm.