“IN THE MOST NORMAL EXISTENCE, THERE IS SOMETHING DRAMATIC”: MORIYAMA’S MIZU NO YUME, 1999, SIGNED BY HIM

MORIYAMA, Daido. Mizu no Yume (Dreams of Water). (Kanagawa: Sokyu-Sha, 1999). Oblong octavo, original bright blue debossed paper boards, original glassine, original cardboard sleeve. $900.

First edition of Moriyama’s dark waterscapes, one of only 980 copies, with 41 full-page high-contrast photogravures, signed by Moriyama in Kanji and English.

Moriyama’s pictures are “shot without heed to the accepted protocols— chance condensations of light mix evidence with abstraction. Like the radar sweep, they obliterate as they reveal” (Neville Wakefield). In this work, Moriyama includes many previously unpublished photographs taken between 1968 and 1997— depicting industrial scenes and nocturnal cityscapes, most containing either a river, ocean, canal, reservoir, puddle, or pond. In Moriyama’s words, “My underlying thought was to show how in the most common and everyday, in the world of the most normal people, in their most normal existence, there is something dramatic.” In the mid 1970s Moriyama developed his ultimate trademark style (for which these images are clear examples) by renting a Tokyo shop and a photocopier, and for 14 days, producing photocopied books of his pictures on demand. See Parr & Badger I, 288; Roth, 218-21.

A fine signed copy.