Whore, Yokosuka
Daidō Moriyama (森山 大道)
Japanese, born 1938
1970
A gelatin silver photograph in which Daidō Moriyama arrests a fleeting, confrontational glimpse of a woman in a narrow alley near Yokosuka, using stark framing and flash to expose the city's nocturnal, marginal life.
The image feels like a sudden jolt — a tilted, claustrophobic passage draws your eye to a backlit figure in a white slip as blown-out highlights, deep blacks, and gritty detail create a voyeuristic, unstable urgency.
This print exemplifies Moriyama’s shift to a raw, snapshot aesthetic that rejected polished documentary norms and helped define a Provoke-era visual language of grain, blur, and urban alienation.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
13 × 8 1/2" (33.1 × 21.7 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the artist
Accession
825.1978
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
