shashasha

Dressed in a sturdy, beautiful silkscreen-printed canvas cover, this 2022 publication collects around 70 photographs from Daido Moriyama’s “Hokkaido” series. In 1978 during a difficult period for the artist, Moriyama spent three months in Hokkaido in search of inspiration. He began to shoot almost compulsively, finishing over 250 rolls with almost 2000 photographs. The work was left untouched until 2008 and subsequently released in several publications. The photographs in “Hokkaido” arguably count among the most potent and striking work of the Japanese master photographer.

Each of the 600 numbered copies has been signed by the artist.

“At the time, I had been feeling like an empty shell with little sense of real life left inside. It was an endless loop of depression and restlessness, and when that came together with an excessive use of sleeping pills that would help me turn my face away, I got stuck in a dilemma that I was eager to get out of. Photography had begun to fade away from me, and likewise, I was distancing myself from photography … Those days of feeling guilty went by one after another, and before the summer ended, I decided to go back to Tokyo. At the end of the day, I haven’t made any progress whatsoever, but what I do have, as a proof of my endless walks to miscellaneous places, are 250 used rolls of film.”
― from Daido Moriyama’s afterword (quoted from a 1984 text)