Portrait of Daidō Moriyama

Birthday profile

Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama, Japanese photographer

Born
October 10, 1938
Age in 2026
88
Zodiac sign
Libra
Birth year
1938

About Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese: 森山 大道, Hepburn: Moriyama Daidō; born October 10, 1938) is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine Provoke. Moriyama began his career as an assistant to photographer Eikoh Hosoe, a co-founder of the avant-garde photo cooperative Vivo, and made his mark with his first photobook Japan: A Photo Theater, published in 1968. His formative work in the 1960s boldly captured the darker qualities of urban life in postwar Japan in rough, unfettered fashion, filtering the rawness of human experience through sharply tilted angles, grained textures, harsh contrast, and blurred movements through the photographer's wandering gaze. Many of his well-known works from the 1960s and 1970s are read through the lenses of post-war reconstruction and post-Occupation cultural upheaval. Moriyama continued to experiment with the representative possibilities offered by the camera in his 1969 Accident series, which was serialized over one year in the photo magazine Asahi Camera, in which he deployed his camera as a copying machine to reproduce existing media images. His 1972 photobook Farewell Photography, which was accompanied by an interview with his fellow Provoke photographer Takuma Nakahira, presents his radical effort to dismantle the medium. Although the photobook is a favored format of presentation among Japanese photographers, Moriyama was particularly prolific: he has produced more than 150 photobooks since 1968. His creative career has been honored by a number of solo exhibitions by major institutions, along with his two-person exhibition with William Klein at Tate Modern in 2012–13. He has received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Hasselblad Award in 2019 and the International Center of Photography Infinity Award in 2012. When the engagement broke up two years later, Moriyama and his students founded Image Shop Camp, the first gallery in Japan dedicated exclusively to photography. Moriyama is widely recognized for his work associated with the short-lived but deeply influential magazine, which was founded by photographers Takuma Nakahira and Yutaka Takanishi, along with critic Kōji Taki and writer Takahiko Okada in 1968.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Daidō Moriyama timeline

  1. Daidō Moriyama (Japanese: 森山 大道, Hepburn: Moriyama Daidō; born October 10, 1938) is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine Provoke.
  2. Moriyama began his career as an assistant to photographer Eikoh Hosoe, a co-founder of the avant-garde photo cooperative Vivo, and made his mark with his first photobook Japan: A Photo Theater, published in 1968.
  3. Moriyama is widely recognized for his work associated with the short-lived but deeply influential magazine, which was founded by photographers Takuma Nakahira and Yutaka Takanishi, along with critic Kōji Taki and writer Takahiko Okada in 1968.

The world when Daidō Moriyama was born

Daidō Moriyama was born in 1938. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1938

  • #1 song"A-Tisket, A-Tasket" – Ella Fitzgerald
  • Top movieThe Adventures of Robin Hood
  • Best-selling bookRebecca – Daphne du Maurier

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentJoe Louis knocks out Max Schmeling in round 1
  • Top headlineWar of the Worlds broadcast causes nationwide panic
  • Technology milestoneNuclear fission discovered
  • Defining fadSuperman debuts in Action Comics #1
  • Notable inventionInstant coffee (Nescafé)
  • World population2.30 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • U.S. population129.8M

1938 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Daidō Moriyama's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19382026
Gas$0.20$3.45/gal
Average home$5,100$435,000
Average income$2,800$67,500
Minimum wage$0.25$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population129.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.