William Klein and Daido Moriyama exhibition at the Tate Modern until 20 January 2013

On 7 November, I was lucky enough to go on an early morning tour of the William Klein and Daido Moriyama exhibition at the Tate Modern, expertly guided by Juliet Bingham, who, with Dr Simon Baker, curated the dual-retrospective of these two pioneering giants of photography. On display are over 300 photographs, stills and films dating from the 1950s  up until the present day.

Daido Moriyama was born in Osaka in 1938. Named Hiromichi, he decided to call himself Daido, which is an alternative way of reading his name’s characters.

Bingham pointed out how Moriyama’s photographs juxtapose every day scenes with those of fashion and trendy areas in Tokyo such as Shinjuku. The grainy feel which the black and white photographs have, is spellbinding. Others are quite blurry or fleeting, leaving much to the imagination.

Moriyama’s photograph of an aborted foetus, which he shot in a Tokyo hospital where aborted foetuses were being kept is ground-breaking, unsettling and powerful.

The exhibition includes photographs spanning Moriyama’s long career such as a series called ‘Platform’, originally made into a photobook. The photographs on display from this book show commuters waiting for a train. They are looking down or around, some are reading, a gaggle of school girls are chatting, and others are patiently waiting.

‘Tales of Tono’ is another photobook. On display were a series of 15 evocative photographs taken in north-eastern Japan. Another series on show was inspired by Daido’s reading of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’.

Juliet Bingham pointed out, how, in his series of photographs of New York, while focusing on the bright lights like Klein, Daido had taken a step back, leading to a feeling of solitude, in contrast to Klein’s photographs which situate the viewer in a group.

One of the rooms towards the end of Daido Moriyama’s section of the exhibition is dedicated to a quiet town in the northern island of Hokkaido showing that he is far from simply interested in megacities such as Tokyo and New York.

I most enjoyed the last room of the Daido Moriyama exhibition, and the image of the stray dog with haunted eyes, taken in Misawa in Aomori Prefecture in 1971. The photograph is reproduced eight times in the room – in different sizes, with the dog facing in opposite directions, as gelatin silver prints and as silk screens. The dog seems to be a distillation of Daido, as many have said before. Juliet Bingham suggested that the dog is an outsider, wild, on the street, with a piercing gaze and similar in many ways to Moriyama himself. The dog can be seen to represent alienation, rebellion, restlessness and the freedom of someone living on the edge perhaps. It is a hugely powerful and compelling photograph. Moriyama’s autobiography itself is titled, ‘Memories of a Dog’.

The photographs of the cherry blossoms in this same room are striking as well. The fleeting beauty of cherry blossoms are representative of the transience of life and beauty in Japan and is a much-used metaphor. As Juliet Bingham suggested, Moriyama’s rendition of them is evocative and mysterious rather than twee or sentimental.

William Klein, was born in New York in 1928 served as a radio operator in France during the Second World War and enrolled at the Sorbonne after the war. He has remained in Paris for most of the last 60 years and was a great influence on Moriyama.

Klein often brings the viewer into the bustling crowds that he photographs. His fresh take on photography also resulted in him taking models out of studios and on the street for fasion shoots. There is an iconic photograph, taken in Rome in 1960, of two models passing each other on a zebra crossing, their striped dresses mirroring the crossing’s lines. The passers-by were unaware that this was being staged for the camera.

Photographs from Klein’s 1964 photobook on Tokyo provide an arresting portrait of the city.

Also included in the exhibition is a series of 15 films made by Klein which touch on student demonstrations in Paris, a youthful Muhammad Ali, footage of ‘The Model Couple’, anticipating programmes such as ‘Big Brother’ in its recording of a newly-wed couple’s life in their fancy new home; and a spoof of Mr Freedom, an American super hero intent on liberating France of communism.

Klein is still active and continuing to experiment; his flattering photograph of Serena Williams appeared in the August 2010 edition of ‘Harper’s Bazaar’.

This exhibition of two giants in photography is on until 20 January 2013.