Friday, September 23, 2022

Daido Moriyama / A Woman in Tights

Tights, 2011. Silver gelatin print 
Photo by Daido Moriyama

Daido Moriyama
A WOMAN IN TIGHTS

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.


“How to Create a Beautiful Picture 3: Tiles of Aizuwakamatsu” by Daido Moriyama, 1987, vintage gelatin silver, printed 1987, 12 x 10 in. Image retrieved from Steven Kasher Gallery.


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.


















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