DAIDO MORIYAMA - A DOG'S MEMORY: FINAL CHAPTER

犬の記憶 終章 (A Dog’s Memory: Final Chapter)
by 森山大道 (Daido Moriyama)

A Dog’s Memory: Final Chapter is a stark and intimate closing act in Daido Moriyama’s lifelong exploration of memory, identity, and the restless gaze of the city. Anchored by a haunting cover image — the back of a shaved head, anonymous and exposed — the book immediately sets a tone of erasure, vulnerability, and quiet violence.

This final chapter reads like a visual memoir stripped to its core. Moriyama’s images move between fragments of urban life, personal recollections, and fleeting encounters, all rendered in his unmistakable high-contrast, grain-heavy black and white. The photographs feel less like documents and more like afterimages — unstable, subjective, and emotionally charged.

Rather than offering resolution, the book embraces ambiguity. Memory here is unreliable, circular, and physical. The “dog” of the title remains a metaphor for instinct, wandering, and survival — a figure moving through streets, time, and consciousness without sentimentality.

A Dog’s Memory: Final Chapter stands as both an ending and a condensation of Moriyama’s practice: photography as obsession, as refusal, as a way of staying alive inside the image.