Memories of a Dog / Daido Moriyama

First edition thus (first English edition), first printing. Hardcover. Black paper-covered boards, with title stamped in gray on spine, with dust jacket. Photographs and text (in English) by Daido Moriyama (translated by John Junkerman, who also translated the text for the important book "The History of Japanese Photography," published in 2003 by Yale University Press and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). 192 pp., with 73 black and white plates, beautifully printed by Toppan Printing Co., Ltd., Japan. The photographs were selected by Moriyama for this edition, and represent work spanning his career to-date. These autobiographical essays, widely considered to be THE essential text to gain a understanding of Daido, the artist and his work, have until now only been published in Japanese. The essays in this book were first published in fifteen installments in the Japanese periodical Asahi Camera beginning in 1983, and have since been published in book form in Japan under the same title. For those English-speaking followers of Moriyama's work, this book of important essays and photographs (available in Japanese paperback editions at most street corner news kiosks in Tokyo) will certainly deepen one's connection to a lifelong body of work that is at once haunting and beautiful, clear and nearly unrecognizable, distant and emotionally confrontational. Moriyama's genius quickly becomes apparent as the writings and images expand upon a vision as powerful as any in the history of photography