'What you see is what you get' … Daido Moriyama's best photograph, Tights, 2011. Silver gelatin print 

Interview

Daido Moriyama's best photograph: my girlfriend's legs in fishnets

Interview by Sarah Phillips

'The calves press against the geometrical surface almost to the point of bursting, but the tension is balanced, making the legs very powerful'

Sarah Phillips
Wednesday 3 October 2012

O

ne day I was drinking coffee with my girlfriend when I caught a glimpse of her legs, which happened to be in stockings with fishnet tights over the top. I immediately started taking photographs.

Most of my work, whether shot in Japan or abroad, is made on the street. I like to photograph the cities I visit and the people I encounter there. One of my best-known images, a shot of a stray dog taken in 1971, is an example of the kind of thing that catches my eye. But sometimes I want to shoot more erotically charged scenes, such as a woman in tights, or a woman's lips.

This picture was taken in 1986, and what you see is what you get. The shoot was quite natural: I asked my girlfriend to make an occasional pose, but didn't particularly direct her. I tend not to have feelings or thoughts while I work: I am completely immersed in the visual world of the subject.

I took two rolls of film in under an hour, then spent three hours printing the photographs. From those, I came up with an eight-page layout for a photography magazine, arbitrarily placing the images in vertical and horizontal positions.

I took another shot the same year, which I called How to Create a Beautiful Picture 3: Tiles of Aizuwakamatsu. It's an image of the corner of a bathroom, also closely cropped, and the hexagonal, beehive-like pattern of the tiles is a clue to understanding the tights series. Like the tiles, the body is confined, but perhaps not as violently as in some of my earlier works. The legs here can move – you can almost feel them about to – which is why they are so erotic. The calves press against the geometrical surface almost to the point of bursting, but the tension is balanced, making the legs very powerful.

Being a photographer is a constant battle with countless fragments; the camera allows me to get closer to a subject and capture its detail. The world appears very erotic in my eyes. Tights are only one example.

CV

Born: Osaka, 1938.

Studied: Self-taught.

Influence: William Klein.

High point: "It's always now."

Low point: "Two years in the late 1970s when I did not carry my camera around."

Top tip: "Take as many photographs you can: it's the only way to train your eyes, body and emotions."

THE GUARDIAN