Using Moriyama’s Style Without His Philosophy

(Augusta & Baldwin, Toronto, 2026)

I don’t use my Ricoh GRiiix all that much but, decided to take it with me while out with my partner and shoot in its hard contrast profile that mimics Daidō Moriyama’s style.¹

He’s one of my favourite photographers; while I really like his images, it’s the philosophy underlying them that truly attracts me. His use of “are, bure, boke”, which is often translated as “grainy/rough, blurry, out-of-focus,” was, in part, an aesthetic opposition to the European photojournalism style. This style tended toward a more realist presentation of the world. What he developed wasn’t just a visual style, but a way of seeing and positioning oneself in relation to the world writ large.

I’m…not shooting with Moriyama’s philosophy. I approach image making from a different perspective that lacks his particular philosophical guidestones. And so this image is experimental, for me, but the experiment is this: what is it like to use a photographer’s so-called “style” that is really an outward (and visually manifested) expression of their values and positionally, when making one’s own images?

This isn’t an image that will do much aside from torturing a few electrons to position bits in this way or that, and only to be seen by a handful of people. But as an experiment in a way of making an image, I find it deeply uncomfortable.

My discomfort stems from this mode being available on Ricoh cameras at all. Specifically, it seems to reduce a so-called “style” — which is really a philosophy — to a selectable profile in a camera. To me, this results in a flattening of what was originally a deliberate and mindful photographic practice, with the effect of subverting or consuming a way of making images and entirely eliding the rationale that undergirds this “style” in the first place.

My perception doesn’t extend to profiles that replicate film stocks, since photographers have historically used film stocks in highly individual ways. But Moriyama’s way of making images was distinctive, and this mode feels uncomfortably close to reproducing that specificity.

I know that many people love the hard contrast mode on Ricoh cameras, and can make really beautiful images with it. But it feels uncomfortable to me, and I don’t see myself using it very often going future.