
MIRAGE
- Publisher
- Match and Company
- Year
- 2013
- Specifications
- Hardcover
297 x 258 mm
56 pages
35 photographs
Text by Hisako Motoo
Limited edition of 1000 copies
MMM label No. 4
A book of unpublished colour positives from the 1970s, proposed by Daido Moriyama himself as the fourth MMM title; typically he simply handed the designer file pages of actual film strips. Shot in 35mm and half-size formats during a period of profound confusion, when he could not distance himself from his photographs and stockpiled colour images faster than they could be shown, the pictures include bondage images made once at the request of the novelist Oniroku Dan, nudes for the Japanese edition of Playboy, glinting neon streets at night, figures seen from behind in railway stations and a woman's sidelong, disdainful glance. After decades the film has taken on mildewy discolouration, as if the scenes were seen through frosted glass, and they turn into hazy memories. An essay by Hisako Motoo on the incidental (chance) and the inevitable (fate) accompanies the images, and the black cover shows a woman's bare legs from the knees down.