shashasha

Issue number 48 in Daido Moriyama’s ongoing “Record” zine series features photographs taken in the town of Yokosuka. The seaside town dominated by the presence of an US military base has personal significance for Moriyama. After all, it is here that he devoted himself to his signature street snap style. According to Moriyama’s afterword (included in Japanese & English), one evening he was suddenly struck with the urge to visit Yokosuka. The (remarkably un-nostalgic) photographs in “Record No. 48” — street scenes, shop windows, posters, etc., taken in Moriyama’s inimitable style—were taken in the span of only two days.

“It was already after 8 PM when I arrived in the ‘Wakamatsu Market’ entertainment district behind Yokosuka Chuo Station on the Keihin Line, but due to the ongoing pandemic, the lights of the normally crowded shops were all switched off. The streets at night had turned into a bleak, dimly lit place, with the usual drunken crowd nowhere in sight. I eventually held my camera into the darkness and shot a dozen or so pictures, while walking quite naturally down the main street toward the ‘Dobuita-dori’ district …
“I remember how determined and ambitious I was when I started shooting, eager to carry my pictures into the Camera Mainichi office and get them published in the magazine. It was a time when I spent my days just clicking away while walking around with the camera in my hand, from Yokosuka out into the suburbs, from the main streets into the back alleys.”
― from Daido Moriyama’s afterword