Memories of a Dog.

Memories of a Dog. Photographs and text by Daido Moriyama. Nazraeli Press, 2004. 192 pp., illustrated throughout, 7x10". Images from here.

Book description:

"Daido Moriyama is without question one of Japan’s most important contemporary photographers and it is not surprising that this memoir, first published as a series of essays in Asahi Camera twenty-one years ago, is regarded as a classic in photographic literature.

In 'Memories of a Dog', Moriyama approaches photography through language, and it is difficult to say which is the more evocative medium.

His vividly expressive prose is in perfect harmony with the grainy, black and white images that in turn have a poetry all their own. As both reader and viewer one becomes completely absorbed, and photographs that will always be remarkable are given a new, very personal, layer of meaning.

This is an eloquent autobiographical account of the artist’s progress through life - the places he’s lived and traveled to, the newsreel theater that was like a 'second school', the bars, the coffee shops, and his journey to take his mother’s ashes to be with those of his father.

From his earliest sensations of being, to the realization that he has become 'willy-nilly and much to my regret, an adult', Moriyama shares his idea of memory, and 'the individual history that goes by the name, I'. "