(October 10, 1938)

Daidō Moriyama (森山大道 in Japanese) is a provocative Japanese street photographer with a very personal style.

He studied design in Osaka, which allowed him to work as a graphic designer, but in 1961 he became interested in photography and decided to learn it. His first teacher was Takeji Iwamiya, and he later learned from Eikoh Hosoe, with whom he worked as an assistant. In 1963, after getting married, he established himself as a freelance photographer.

He was a founding member of the Provoke group, created in 1969, along with Takuma Nakahira and Koji Taki. In 1974, he founded the Photo Workshop School in Tokyo with Nobuyoshi Araki, Masahisa Fukase, Eikoh Hosoe, Noriyaki Yokosuka, and Shomei Tomatsu. His main student was Keizō Kitajima.

His work is characterized by a technique that frequently uses blurring effects on figures, overexposure, and strong black-and-white contrasts, which can make his photos appear imperfect. The subjects he deals with mostly refer to city life, using a radical visual language inspired by Robert Frank, Shōmei Tōmatsu, Andy Warhol, and William Klein.

He has published numerous books, the first of which was Japan: A Photo Theater, published in 1968, followed by Documentary 1-5, Another Country, Tales of Tono, and Japan: A Photo Theater II. After a creative crisis in 1977, he returned to publishing with Light and Shadow in 1982, which has been followed by numerous other books.

Among the awards he has received are the 1983 annual award from the Photographic Society of Japan and the 2004 Culture Award from the German Photographic Association. In 2019, he won the prestigious Hasselblad Award.