Daido Moriyama Retrospective at C/O Berlin Explores Photography's Limits and Urban Decay

C/O Berlin presents a retrospective of Daido Moriyama, featuring around 250 works from the 84-year-old Japanese photographer's career, running from May 13 to September 6. Many images are reproductions pasted on walls, echoing his early photostories in magazines like Camera Mainichi and Gendai no Me, where his 1965 project depicted preserved human foetuses. Influenced by William Klein and Andy Warhol, Moriyama's street-level focus reveals insalubrious aspects of modern Japan, as seen in series like Accident: Premeditated or Not (1969), which includes murky rephotographed media images of Robert F. Kennedy. He accompanied police in Tokyo's Shinjuku district, visited shipwreck sites and abandoned villages, and captured Zushi Beach as a polluted 'sea equivalent to a sewer.' In the 1970s, inspired by Jack Kerouac, he traveled across Japan, photographing biker gangs and bears, then went to America, producing work that felt overshadowed by Klein. Moriyama's 1972 book Farewell Photography abandoned faith in the medium's communicative power, followed by a blurry period marked by anxiety and sleeping pill addiction. Memories of a Dog (1981–82) revisited his childhood, while later series like Labyrinth (2012) and Cities (1980) reestablished his urban focus, expanding to São Paulo. Pretty Woman (2017) critiques seductive distraction, though the exhibition emphasizes his early demonstration that photography cannot fully depict a scarier real world.