The seventies was a time of extreme popularization of amateur photography, where there is nobody who wouldn't photograph (visual analphabet). Simultaneously the mass media became visual, and the overwhelmingly chaotic circulation of images drastically changed the condition of visual expression. The camera-eye as an important gaze has been dispersed and replaced by the ubiquitous “world of dots,” i.e. the world of pixels.

Minoru Shimizu ‘Shinjuku, Index', DAIDO MORIYAMA THE COMPLETE WORKS VOL. 4, DAIWA RADIATOR FACTORY Co., Ltd., 2004, p.395

When photographs or illustrations are printed in media such as newspapers, magazines, and posters, etc., gradation is expressed through extremely small halftone dots (mesh), in what is called the ‘halftone printing process.' The 1970s, when images (photographs, video) began to be reproduced and consumed upon a large-scale, marked precisely the dawn of the ‘Meshed World.' This show features 11 exhibition prints from Moriyama's July 1977 exhibition “Tokyo' Meshed World” (Nikon Salon Ginza / Shinjuku / Osaka), as well as one new photograph taken recently in Tokyo.

With the publication of the photo book Farewell Photography (Shashinhyoronsha, 1972), Moriyama considered the photographs taken since his independence in 1964, after which he began new experiments such as holding exhibitions of his work, that he had theretofore stubbornly rejected.

Following “The Tales of Tono” (1974) and “Goshogawara” (1976), which are rife with the particular characteristics of rural landscape, his third solo show at the Nikon Salon “Tokyo' Meshed World” was literally set in Tokyo, focusing upon ‘people', however, Moriyama's lense was not directed at flesh and blood, rather at the ‘Meshed World' and female mannequins. We hope you will enjoy Moriyama's works, in which the world of illusory images and the real world are perverted.