Daido Moriyama - Reflection and Refraction

Daido Moriyama's Reflection and Refraction is compiled from two earlier collections, Auto-portrait and Sunflower, published by MMM in 2010 and 2011 respectively. Carefully sequenced and handsomely printed in deep, resonant blacks that intensify the grainy textures Moriyama so famously elicits from his street scenes and interiors, Reflection and Refraction forms a cumulative record of Japan's often contradictory social fabric. Moriyama's images are intensely brooding and yet seemingly casual, establishing a relationship to the world that he likens to his shadow, in the brief preface to this volume: "I strolled down the street holding a camera, my shadow falling onto the road and across walls. With the sun high above, my shadow followed closely, as though pursuing me. The silhouette-shadow was now my companion [...] This is how my shadow and I relate to each other. Similarly, my camera and I, or the world and photography also connect to each other in the same way."