Another Provoke Movement

 There has never been a Provoke movement in American photography and the closest thing to it was the one man show of William Klein's 1950s New York photography. It's breakdown of photography was as much about the photographer as the photographs. The fight against boring photography, academic photography, and advertisement photography led to a group of five photographers in Tokyo in 1968. Daido Moriyama, Takuma Nakahira, Takahiko Okada, Yutaka Takanashi, and Koji Taki produced imagery and words that would scare the hell out of most curators and academic types in this country. Only a brave few have exhibited or championed the work here. The photos, especially from Moriyama and Nakahira not only make you look twice but requires the viewer to think. they were trying to deconstruct photography itself. More than ever there needs to be a movement like this today. Social media with instagram in the leed proves the boring communal or collective state of photography today. As Moriyama said back in 1968 "photography has become shitty". In America photography has almost always been straight forward because of the viewers need to feel safe and intelligent. This is primarily the fault of the photographer who wants be understood, relevant and not an outsider. Photography in this country is in serious trouble.
50 Years Since Provoke

Video: Daido Moriyama on Provoke