Daido Moriyama – Menu printing show

Last week saw the opening of the latest exhibition at Tate Modern, William Klein + Daido Moriyama. Both photographers are renowned for their gritty depiction of urban life on the streets of  New York and Tokyo; in this exhibition the similarities in their approach to documenting the city are explored in great detail through works that cover the 50’s to the present day. A particular focus of the Moriyama section, is the artists relationship with publishing. He is a prolific producer of books, producing over 85 books and magazines during his career, some of which have become highly collectible.

To coincide with the show, Moriyama recreated his 1974 Printing Show in conjunction with Goliga and Tate Modern. In the original show, Moriyama set up a wall of images taken during a visit to New York and a bank of photocopiers. Visitors were then allowed to select images that would then be printed and bound in to a unique book entitled Another Country in New York. For this show, entitled Menu, Moriyama mounted 60 double-page spreads on the walls of the East Room at Tate Modern and allowed ticket holders to select 20 of these images, in whichever order they wanted, which were then bound inside a silkscreened cover (choice of two covers, created during the event). Moriyama was also on hand to sign the finished book. The whole process created a totally unique book, I would be amazed if any two books were the same!

The welcome sign

The wall of images

The tough job of making your selection!

Silkscreening of the book covers

One of the silkscreens

The two book cover options

Where the book was assembled

Daido Moriyama signing the finished product