Few photographers have carved a path as distinctive and influential as street photography legend Daido Moriyama. For many photographers around the world, his images - characterized by their grainy, fractured, and restless quality - fundamentally changed how we think about and approach street photography as an art form.

For decades, Moriyama has been recognized as an icon in the photography world. Known as a wanderer with a camera, his Record journals continue to release new volumes into the world, serving as proof that at 86 years old, he hasn't slowed his creative pace. Yet behind this vast and impressive body of work lies a beginning: four foundational photobooks that defined his unique voice and set him on his revolutionary trajectory.

This month, Thames & Hudson brings those seminal works together in "Daido Moriyama: Quartet," an important anthology that collects "Japan: A Photo Theater" (1968), "A Hunter" (1972), "Farewell Photography" (1972), and "Light and Shadow" (1982) in a single comprehensive volume.

These four books are not merely early experiments or student work. They are, as author and editor Mark Holborn recognizes, the absolute bedrock of Moriyama's practice - the books that established him as one of the most radical and uncompromising voices to emerge from postwar Japan's photography scene.

For years, these titles have existed as legends among photography enthusiasts and professionals alike. They have been notoriously hard to find, expensive to own when available, and their influence has been discussed more often than actually seen by most photographers. To encounter them now, sequenced as originally intended and framed with previously unpublished material from Moriyama's personal diaries and notebooks, is to trace the complete arc of an artist becoming himself.

Moriyama came of age during a Japan defined by dramatic transformation. The late 1960s through the early 1980s represented a period of rapid modernization, intense political turbulence, and sweeping cultural change throughout Japanese society. His artistic response was to completely reject the rigid formalism of earlier documentary photography work, opting instead for something urgent and instinctive - images that felt torn directly from the world rather than carefully composed in a traditional sense.

"Japan: A Photo Theater" announced this revolutionary approach to photography. Shot in Osaka's bustling entertainment districts, the work was theatrical in every conceivable sense: professional actors and actresses were posed alongside spontaneous moments stolen from the streets, creating a deliberate collision between performance and reality that challenged conventional documentary photography.

In "A Hunter," Moriyama pushed his aesthetic philosophy even further, fully embracing what he later termed 'are, bure, boke' (grainy, blurry, out-of-focus) - a distinctive visual language that prioritized conveying raw sensation over precise description. This approach became a defining characteristic of his work and influenced countless street photographers who followed.

Then came "Farewell Photography," perhaps his most confrontational and challenging book, where images deliberately collapse into abstraction, negatives are intentionally scratched and overexposed, and the very act of photographing is turned completely inside out. The work served as both a sharp critique of conventional photography and a liberation from its constraints, representing a bold refusal to play by established rules.

By the time "Light and Shadow" was published in 1982, the earlier chaos had settled into something more measured, yet no less distinctive in its impact. The book presents a careful study of contrasts, of momentary brilliance set against darkness, serving as a metaphor for the balance that would come to define his later work throughout his career.

Taken together, these four books map a complete evolution in photographic thinking, one whose influence still ripples through contemporary photography today.

The author first encountered Moriyama's work in the pages of his ongoing journal series, Record. What struck then, and continues to resonate now, is his underlying philosophy about photography. The way Moriyama talks about being completely present in the moment, shooting without hesitation, and valuing emotional feeling over technical precision represents a fundamental approach to the medium. In our current era obsessed with resolution, technical perfection, and pixel-peeping, Moriyama reminds us that imperfection can actually hold more truth and emotional power than technically perfect images.

This is not the first time Thames & Hudson and Mark Holborn have worked extensively with Moriyama's archives. Previous collaborative projects such as "Record" and "Record No. 2" opened important windows onto his lifelong visual journal, a series that continues to this day with new volumes being published regularly.

Where those previous volumes captured his ongoing practice and current work, "Quartet" looks backward to the formative years when his distinctive visual language was still developing, and demonstrates just how daring and revolutionary those early steps actually were. Like the Record series, this new release is brilliantly designed, housed in an elegant slipcase and beautifully presented - clearly a book meant to be lived with and regularly referenced, not just shelved and forgotten.

Moriyama's influence has always loomed large within Japan's photography community, but in recent years his international reputation in the West has surged dramatically. Major museum exhibitions, critical academic essays, and the continued publication of his Record journals have brought his name and work to entirely new audiences of photographers and art enthusiasts.

In that cultural climate, "Quartet" feels both perfectly timed and absolutely necessary - providing a way to revisit and understand the foundations of a career that now seems truly monumental in its scope and influence. The book also serves as an important reminder that genuinely radical artistic work rarely begins fully formed. These four foundational books span fifteen crucial years in Moriyama's development - representing a sustained period of searching, breaking established rules, and rebuilding photography from the ground up.

For photographers and art lovers who already know his work well, "Quartet" offers a valuable chance to reconnect with the raw energy and experimental spirit of his early years. For those who are unfamiliar with his revolutionary approach to street photography, this comprehensive collection represents the perfect place to begin understanding one of photography's most important voices.

"Daido Moriyama: Quartet" by Mark Holborn is published by Thames & Hudson and is priced at $75 in the US, £65 in the UK, and AU$145 in Australia. The book is scheduled for release in the United Kingdom at the end of August and in the United States in mid-September, with pre-orders already available through major retailers.