"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness." (Oscar Wilde)
Lately I have been reading a lot about Daido Moriyama and some other photographers associated with him, and of course I've looked at many pictures. I have known Moriyama's work for a decade or two, but it seems only now these photos are starting to speak to me. Some things need time.
I find it fascinating how they work, and it’s interesting to read about the degree of awareness they had of what they were doing. They were really up to date theoretically and somehow worked with that. Well, possibly the 60s, 70s and still part of the 80s were a good time for this, when modernism turned to post-modernism and all kinds of stuff.
Maybe it’s anachronistic to mimic a style 60 years old. I mean, we all know that’s long gone for better or worse … but still, I tried.
Doing this has already taught me at least three things that are quite valuable:
1.
I consider myself an "advanced" photographer, after doing it for almost 40 years and basically doing nothing else for 25 years now. But in this field I am an absolute beginner. It’s humbling in a good way to see (and to feel) that I don’t know anything about this.
2.
It’s surprisingly hard to let go of the "conventional" photographic qualities most of us learned the hard way. Now it feels so strange to make blurry, underexposed, tilted photos. You really need to trick yourself to give up control.
3.
This kind of photography seems to be at least as much about "feeling the scene" as "seeing the scene". It’s hard to put in words that are not clichéd, but it’s more seeing with the imagination than with your eyes. It’s another way to approach previsualization, I guess – possibly quite useful for other genres, even if those pictures are not so great.
