William Klein + Daido Moriyama, Tate Modern, SE1 - review

Ordinary lives in New York and Tokyo given focus in a series of gritty close-up shots
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16 October 2012

Blockbuster is a horribly over-used word for exhibitions but in this case entirely appropriate. A double retrospective, it covers the lifetime’s work of two hugely significant, closely linked photographic artists: the American octogenarian William Klein and septuagenarian Tokyo resident, Daido Moriyama.

On entering the Tate, we are greeted by four massive black-and-white Klein prints from the Fifties, depicting ordinary scenes from life in New York, Rome and Moscow. Marvellously detailed and emotionally expressive, they overlook the collection of small prints documenting the same cities and including Moscow sunbathers and New York kids lolling against a wall of posters. The graphics on those posters helped contribute to his incorporation of Japanese alphabet letters into the graphic designs woven into photographs over many years.

The exhibition’s 300 photographs, dozens of photo-books and magazines featuring work by both artists, installations and films, are dazzling and reveal continuous chronological changes. Klein’s early influence on Moriyama remains but redirected him into a unique identity.

Films were central to Klein’s work but his Fifties fashion shoots for American and French Vogue built his international name, a success achieved by breaking rules and taking models onto the streets and walking them among passers-by. Plaza de Spagna, Rome, 1960 positioned black- and-white outfits on a zebra crossing, an unforgettable image in fashion history.

Moriyama’s earliest productions featured in the avant garde political magazine Provoke, where a cover shows a dimly-lit naked girl smoking on her bed, a pointer to his future erotic reputation and the existential darkness pervading many projects. The recent series, Tights, shot close, converts the curvaceous legs and buttocks enveloped in fish-net into marvellous sculpted forms.

His recent pieces constructed from multiple gridded images resemble a storyboard for abstract Japanese films — and introduces colour. Both he and Klein made that move. Klein’s bright glossy paint radiates from a series of enlarged contact prints once used to mark a chosen picture and now transforming many past image. Smoke is a sensational triptych of portraits of a fashion model smoking, her face framed by thick strokes of gaudy gloss paint.

Leaving this dream-like exhibition embeds memories which don’t seem to close down.

Until 20 January, 2013. tate.org.uk

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