© Daido Moriyama

shinjuku 1973, 25pm, 2006
DVD transferred from 8 mm film, 16:53 min


Daido Moriyama
shinjuku 1973, 25pm



Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to announce our forthcoming solo exhibition with Daido Moriyama. The exhibition will premiere "shinjuku 1973, 25pm," a film work shot by Daido Moriyama in 1973.


In 17 minutes, not a second goes by in which the camera focus on the scene,
there is nothing but blurs flows, rough images.
Light splits off and fades away, hangs down and is caught in the tepid night,
a world of bored darkness.
Atmosphere at midnight in Shinjuku, 35 years ago.
The sound is an engine of the machine of Nanahan and the horn of a taxi.
I, who shot it, return to a limitless nostalgia for the Shinjuku
at 25:00 pm of those days.
An 8mm video version of "Farewell Photography."

Daido Moriyama, 2006


This film was originally shot in 1973 with an 8 mm portable VTR, by the request of Shinjuku Ward for promotion of the city. However, the completed film was rejected by Shinjuku Ward because it was a sequence of unidentified images in which one cannot identify the country in which it was shot. Thus the film was shelved for over 30 years.


The "Blurs / flows / rough images," which are characteristic of Moriyama's photography, obviously appear in this film. The screen sways as if in the wind, the night town a trace of light that comes and goes, the camera tracing a monochrome world which is situated somewhere between the border of figuration and abstraction.


On the occasion of screening the film, we will exhibit new photographic stills which Moriyama shot from the rediscovered film. The repetition inherent in this project serves as further evidence of Moriyama's continuing concern with the act of copying.


Exhibition: July 25 - August 26, 2006
Opening hours: Tues-Sat 11 am - 7 pm


Taka Ishii Gallery
1-3-2-5F Kiyosumi, Koto-ku
J-Tokyo #135-0024
Telephone +81(0)3 5646 6050
Fax +81(0)3 3642 3067
Email tig@takaishiigallery.com

www.takaishiigallery.com