Mono / Mono: an Ode to Daidō

In Mono / Mono: an ode to Daidō, David Marion walks the backstreets of Japan with a 35mm camera and a restless eye, channeling the spirit of Daidō Moriyama—grainy, impulsive, and always just on the edge of vanishing. Shot on black-and-white film and printed by hand in the darkroom, these photographs are less about documenting Japan, and more about catching it mid-breath.

The title plays with dual meanings: the English mono—monochrome, singular, alone—and the Japanese mono (物)—thing, object, moment. These are things glimpsed, not staged. Fragments of a world constantly moving, resisting clarity, resisting permanence.

Like Moriyama, Marion trusts instinct over precision. The blur of motion, the blown-out highlights, the accidental beauty of imperfection—nothing is retouched, nothing is corrected. The darkroom becomes a place of surrender, where silver halide reacts not just to light, but to memory, friction, noise.This work doesn’t ask to be understood. It asks to be felt. Mono / Mono: an ode to Daidō is not a narrative, but a rhythm: the hush of shadow, the grit of pavement, the texture of a face half-turned. These images don’t explain. They witness. And in doing so, they hold space for the fleeting—the things we pass by, the things we almost saw.