Daido Moriyama. Kagero and Colors

PowerShovel Books, Tokyo, 2009. hardcover. fine. This gorgeous, text-free, oversized collection of full-bleed color and black-and-white photographs compiles a host of previously unseen color nudes together with the collection that formed Daido Moriyama's extremely rare fourth solo book, Kagerou, published in 1972. Here, Moriyama captures bondage and nudity with a self-described "samurai tenderness"--a mood, an intimacy and yet also a distance--as if the artist might have snapped the photographs against his will. The stagings are not careful. They are rushed, immediate and mysteriously visceral. Even the knots seem to have been hastily tied. Each of the 60 photographs gathered here suggests that something has happened or something will happen--something furious, resonant or highly anticipated. There are no models smiling, no boasts of romantic conquest, rarely even a face, and certainly no hint of playfulness. Rather, this is a collection of desires, of mothers, sisters and lovers.