MORIYAMA, Daido.

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Shashin yo sayonara (Bye, Bye Photography). First edition of this central book of the Provoke era. The photographs were taken during a period of strikes, student protests, and violent antiwar demonstrations, centring on a debate over the connection between photography and reality. Shashin yo sayonara documents a conversation between Moriyama and Nakahira Takuma, one of the founding members of Provoke magazine. In the book, Moriyama's blurred and coarse shots are arranged in an almost random order, in an attempt to represent the density of modern Japan and the vast social changes that were brought about in the post-war period. "Shashin yo sayonara is the most extreme monument of the Provoke period, indeed one of the most extreme photobooks ever published. Daido Moriyama pushes both the form of the photographic sequence and the photograph itself to the limits of legibility... Any notion of 'good' technique is thrown out the window. The pictures exhibit all the qualities of reject negatives discarded in the darkroom then retrieved from the bin. The photographic language is one of blur, motion, scratches, light leaks, dust, graininess and stains, like Robert Frank or William Klein on speed" (Parr & Badger, p. 298).

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