Daidō Moriyama was born in Osaka in 1938 and moved to Tokyo in 1961. He had been inspired to pursue photography by William Klein's New York. "If the first book on photographs and photography I saw were, for instance, by Cartier-Bresson, I probably would not have been so shocked... all went beyond the meaning inherent in the photos themselves, and I was certainly shocked."
Moriyama had gone to Tokyo hoping to work for the VIVO cooperative but arrived as the group was breaking up. Instead, he was hired as an assistant by Eikoh Hosoe who continued to share an office with Shōmei Tōmatsu. Moriyama was allowed to study the group's files. It was Tōmatsu who introduced Moriyama to Takuma Nakahira, the driving force behind Provoke, in 1964. Moriyama was not concerned with politics like his friend, he claimed his photographs were not a critique of Japan but simply what he witnessed. He had not wanted to abandon the magazine as quickly as the rest of the Provoke group, and he continued bure, boke photography. Moriyama became busier after Provoke, and though he published the photobook A Farewell to Photography (Shashin yo Sayōnara) in 1972, his career was just beginning. Of the photographers associated with the magazine, Moriyama has been the most successful and is the most well-known outside of Japan.
- William Klein. Life is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1956, p.142-143.
- Daidō Moriyama. Shashin yo sayōnara/ Hachigatsu futsuka yama no ue hoteru. Tokyo: Shashin Hyōron Sha, 1972, [p.220-221].
- Daidō Moriyama. Moriyama Daidō zensakuhinshũ /henshũ D-Project, vol. 1. Hiroshima: Daiwa Radiētā Seisakujo, 2003, p.216-217.
- Sandra S. Phillips. Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog. San Francisco, California: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1999, plates 27-28.