NEW YORK | Wed Oct 10, 2012 1:21pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Books about war-torn Iraq and post-World War II Eastern Europe, Lyndon Johnson and Mumbai were among 20 finalists announced on Wednesday for the annual National Book Awards, among the most prestigious in U.S. publishing.

The National Book Foundation, which administers the awards, nominated five writers in each of four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature.

The finalists for the nonfiction prize included former New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid, who received a posthumous nomination for "House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East," and Robert Caro for the fourth volume in his monumental biography of former U.S. President Johnson, "The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4."

Both writers are Pulitzer Prize winners. Shadid died of an asthma attack while reporting in eastern Syria in February aged 43.

Nominees for fiction included well-known authors such as Junot Díaz for "This Is How You Lose Her" and Dave Eggers for "A Hologram for the King."

Louise Erdrich for "The Round House," Ben Fountain for "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk," and Kevin Powers for "The Yellow Birds" were the other fiction finalists.

Nonfiction nominees also included Anne Applebaum for "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956," Katherine Boo for "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity," and Domingo Martinez for "The Boy Kings of Texas."

Winners will be chosen by panels of four or five judges, who include writers Brad Gooch and Susan Orlean for nonfiction and Stacey D'Erasmo and Janet Peery on the fiction side.

The poetry finalists included David Ferry for "Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations," Cynthia Huntington for "Heavenly Bodies," Tim Seibles for "Fast Animal," Alan Shapiro for "Night of the Republic" and Susan Wheeler for "Meme."

The young people's literature finalists were William Alexander for "Goblin Secrets," Carrie Arcos for "Out of Reach," Patricia McCormick for "Never Fall Down," Eliot Schrefer for "Endangered" and Steve Sheinkin for "Bomb: The Race to Build— and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon."

The four winning writers each receive a $10,000 prize.

The awards will be presented on November 14 at a gala ceremony in New York at which novelist Elmore Leonard and New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. will also receive lifetime achievement honors.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud, editing by Christine Kearney; and Peter Galloway)

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TOKYO | Fri Oct 12, 2012 3:47pm EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - British finance minister George Osborne on Saturday blamed an effective German veto for the failure of a $45 billion merger between British defense firm BAE (BAES.L) and European aerospace group EADS (EAD.PA) this week.

Speaking to British reporters on the sidelines of an International Monetary Fund meeting in Tokyo, Osborne said the transaction might have succeeded if the national governments and the companies' shareholders had discussed it more thoroughly.

"It is not that we were committed to the deal, we just thought it worth discussing. We have been a bit disappointed primarily by Germany's attitude, which in effect vetoed the deal," Osborne said.

"I would like to have found more time to discuss the possibility of merger," he added.

Talks to create the world's largest aerospace and defense company collapsed on Wednesday. Several sources involved in the discussions said German Chancellor Angela Merkel had blocked the deal, but that Britain and France were supportive.

German sources have however said they were unconvinced by the deal's commercial logic, and were concerned the combined company could be locked out of U.S. defense deals.

BAE is a private British company, and the U.S. armed forces account for nearly half of its revenue. Because Washington is reluctant to give contracts to firms influenced by foreign governments, BAE considers minimizing state control as crucial to its business.

EADS has a more complicated share structure that gives big influence to German and French industrial groups and the French state. To keep its influence at the combined firm, Germany would have had to have bought out a holding by engineering firm Daimler.

Osborne said the British government's stance had been straightforward.

"We had some very clear red lines: we were absolutely clear our national security had to be protected, absolutely clear that we wanted to protect job and investment in the UK, and we were concerned about large shareholdings held by other countries."

(Reporting by David Milliken: Editing by Neil Fullick/Jeremy Gaunt)

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NEW YORK | Fri Oct 12, 2012 7:33pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine will return to the conducting podium in May 2013 - initially in a wheelchair - after a fall more than a year ago that left him partially paralyzed, the New York opera house said on Friday.

Levine, 69, who has been the Met's music director since 1976, will conduct the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in May 2013, before leading three operas during the Met's 2013-14 season, the Met said in a statement.

Met General Manager Peter Gelb called Levine's return to conducting "great news for opera lovers throughout the world," while Levine said: "I'm looking forward more than I can say to getting back to work."

Levine has been in long-term rehabilitation since injuring his spine in a fall while on vacation in August 2011 that required surgery and left him partially paralyzed.

While his upper body strength has returned, his injuries have left him temporarily unable to walk.

The Met said that for the time being, he will conduct from a motorized wheelchair. In anticipation of Levine's return, the Met's technical department is designing customized, elevating podiums that will be utilized on the Carnegie Hall stage and in the Met's orchestra pit.

Levine referred to the "long healing process" from his spine injury, but said he feels better with each passing day.

For the 2013-14 season, Levine is scheduled to conduct a new production of Verdi's "Falstaff" and revivals of Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" and Berg's "Wozzeck."

The Met said that in recent weeks, Levine has gradually been taking on more of his duties as music director, including coaching members of the organization's young artist development program and holding artistic planning sessions.

His physician, Dr. Len Horovitz, who coordinates his medical team, said Levine was "an inspirational case, whose return to conducting will be a result of remarkable perseverance and hard work."

Levine made his debut with the company in 1971 and has conducted 2,441 performances there, more than anyone in the company's 129-year history. His last performance as a conductor was of Wagner's "Die Walküre" on May 14, 2011.

(Reporting By Ellen Freilich; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Walsh)

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A portrait of the late pop star Michael Jackson is displayed on a slot machine at Gaming Expo Asia in Macau May 22, 2012.

NEW YORK | Fri Oct 12, 2012 1:54pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Michael Jackson was the ultimate entertainer, who oversaw all the details of his shows, from the slick choreography to the rhinestones and pearls carefully hand sewn onto his elaborate costumes, his longtime costume designer says.

As much as music and dance characterized the pop superstar, the late Jackson was also known for his style, from military outfits and regalia, to jewel-encrusted gloves, fedora hats and intricately beaded jackets.

In a new book, "The King of Style: Dressing Michael Jackson," Michael Bush, the man who designed and made Jackson's stage costumes for 25 years until the pop star's death in 2009, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the iconic superstar and the development of his signature style.

"The clothes had to work around the way he was performing," Bush told Reuters in a telephone interview. "He wanted his outfits, or his costumes, to be as entertaining on a hanger as they were on him. It was an added layer of refinement and detail that he was projecting to his audience."

Everything Jackson wore had a focus and was an extension of what he was doing on stage, with dance playing a pivotal role in the designs. He favored rhinestones and beading because they reflected the stage lighting.

Function, fitness and comfort were essential, with neckties and fringes forbidden because they could be grabbed by fans.

"It was very contrived. It was very thought out," said Bush, adding that as the stadiums got bigger, Jackson's pants got shorter and shorter, the better to see his rhinestone socks.

"Michael was concerned that the people in the back row paid just as much to see him perform as the people in the front, so no one got cheated out of the entertainment he was projecting, because everyone could see what he was doing," Bush said.

MAN OF PARADOXES

Each of the 800 to 900 costumes Bush and his partner Dennis Tompkins, who died last year, made for Jackson were over-the-top, skin tight, flashy pop-star creations. Many are shown in detailed photographs in the book, along with sketches and performance photos.

Still, away from the spotlight, Jackson preferred more casual, loose-fitting corduroy shirts, black cotton pants with front pleats, and loafers.

And despite all his fame and wealth, and gifts of expensive designer shoes, Jackson always performed in Florsheim shoes, which can be purchased in most U.S. malls.

"He taught himself to dance in Florsheims. They were comfortable and were what he had worn as a child star," Bush explained in the book, to be published October 23.

Jackson's style evolved from his military outfits, featuring taut lines and embellishments and designed with his female audience in mind. These were followed by a more rebellious, edgy look with leather jackets, including one with small spoons and forks dangling, like military medals, across the front.

"The first layer was the jacket, then we put the zipper underneath that and the buckles from the "Bad" album look, and then we asked: 'How can we make this larger than life on stage?'"

Strobe lights and electric jackets were the next step. Each album had its own look, which evolved from the look preceding it.

Perhaps Bush and Tompkins's greatest achievement was Jackson's "lean shoes," which were eventually patented. He first performed his "lean move," leaning forward at a 45-degree angle in the short film "Smooth Criminal" in 1987, thanks to behind-the-scenes magic.

Bush and Tompkins were tasked with developing shoes that would allow Jackson to perform the move before a live audience, without falling over. It took Tompkins a month but he devised shoes that bolted to the floor and worked perfectly on stage.

Although Jackson claimed not to have a favorite costume, Bush said the one the pop star liked the most, and in which he was laid to rest, was the pearl and bead encrusted white military jacket that he wore when his sister Janet handed him a Grammy award in 1993.

There wasn't time to track down the original jacket when the Jackson family contacted Bush and Tompkins and asked them to choose his final outfit, so they made a copy.

"Michael was a man of many paradoxes, most of which we were able to represent in the clothes we designed: Rigid military cuts that were also elastic and moveable; rebellious regalia, fit for army commanders, worn over the heart of a gentle man; bedazzled embellishments adorning a man blessed with a quiet humility; one of a kind, handcrafted clothes worn with aged, scuffed Florsheim shoes," Bush said in the book.

Jackson, 50, died in Los Angeles in June 2009 from an overdose of the surgical anesthetic propofol, which he was taking to help him sleep. His personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, is serving a four-year prison term for involuntary manslaughter.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Bernadette Baum)

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LONDON | Fri Oct 12, 2012 8:58am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Frantic drilling activity across the United States has at last begun to moderate, as the industry responds to the plunge in prices for natural gas and now liquids such as butane and natural gasoline.

Production companies have switched towards oil-rich and liquids-rich plays since 2008, driven by the gas glut and falling gas prices. But now the number of rigs targeting oil and condensate plays also appears to have peaked.

Between July 2008 and July 2012, the number of rigs drilling for gas fell by almost two thirds, from 1,555 to just 522, while the number of rigs targeting oil rose four-fold, from 393 to 1,427, according to oilfield services company Baker Hughes, as the industry responded to a record oil/gas price ratio (Chart 1).

Rigs shifted from dry-gas plays such as the Barnett shale underneath Fort Worth in Texas to wet-gas plays such as Eagle Ford in south-west Texas, where methane is found in association with heavier molecules like ethane, and oil-rich plays like North Dakota's Bakken.

High prices for co-products helped support continued gas drilling and production even as prices sank below $3 per million British thermal units. They have also significantly improved the economics of oil wells drilled in comparatively expensive shale plays.

Bakken wells cost an average $8.5 million each to drill, making them some of the most expensive in the country. But the internal rate of return is almost 60 percent, among the highest, according to a recent study by Bentek, in part because of the high yield of natural gas liquids, which can be stripped from the associated gas production and sold separately ("The Williston Basin: Greasing the Gears for Growth in North Dakota" July 2012).

CONDENSATE GLUT

The massive expansion of liquids output is now causing its own problems, however, as the market becomes flooded with record stocks of ethane, propane, butane and natural gasoline, weighing down prices.

Combined stocks of natural gas liquids (NGLs) currently stand at 188 million barrels, up from 147 million at the same point last year, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Butane prices have fallen to just $62 per barrel, down from $75 in 2011. Natural gasoline prices are down to $87, from almost $100 last year.

The total number of rigs drilling on land for some combination of oil, gas and condensates across the United States has fallen by 189 (9.6 percent) from 1,978 to 1,789 over the last 12 months.

Over the border, in Canada, the number of rigs drilling on land is down by 150 (29 percent) from 521 to 371 over the last year.

Rig counts alone provide a misleading indication of total drilling activity, since drillers have become adept at drilling faster, more accurately, minimizing downtime and generally becoming more efficient.

As the oil and gas boom has sent the costs of hiring rigs and crews soaring, the pressure to improve efficiency has become intense. Fewer drilling rigs can now drill more wells than before.

Nonetheless, there are signs the drilling market in North American is starting to cool slightly as poor prices for natural gas and now liquids have an impact.

In its second quarter earnings release, oilfield services company Schlumberger noted the hydraulic fracturing market on land in North America has weakened in recent quarters.

The downturn appears to be quite general across the United States, with rig counts down in most major petroleum-producing states (Charts 2-3).

DRILLING SHIFTS AGAIN

Outside North America, where prices are not so affected by freely available shale gas, drilling continues to rise.

In September, there were 1,254 rigs drilling for oil or gas outside the United States and Canada, according to Baker Hughes. It was more than double the number in 1999 and the highest number of operating rigs since 1986 (Chart 4).

The boom centers on the Middle East, where there were 381 rigs drilling last month, up from 292 in September 2011 and 276 in 2010. Latin America has also witnessed a sharp expansion in exploration and production activity, with a smaller uptick in Africa.

As surplus oil and gas production in North America depresses prices, more drilling assets and specialist crews will be redeployed overseas to take advantage of higher returns.

(Editing by Keiron Henderson)

(John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own)

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NEW YORK | Fri Oct 12, 2012 5:03pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Third-quarter U.S. earnings have just begun, but already U.S. companies are sounding alarm bells about the fourth quarter.

Outlooks for the fourth quarter - just two weeks old - are so far decidedly more negative than positive. Thomson Reuters data shows 11 negative outlooks so far from Standard & Poor's 500 companies and no positive outlooks.

Third-quarter guidance, meanwhile, at the comparable period showed 6 negative outlooks and no positive.

The market has seen this play out before - companies systematically lower the bar, only to exceed estimates by a fair amount, resulting in "surprises" that bolster stock prices. This hasn't happened yet in this earnings season, but investors are on the lookout for it.

"It's really an issue of whether companies are trying to set the bar lower and give themselves an easier target to beat or whether it really does reflect a substantial risk of a slowing global economy," said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management in New York.

However, U.S. companies so far are having a tougher time beating analyst expectations in the third quarter, with 59 percent of companies exceeding forecasts, below the 62 percent long-term average, based on Thomson Reuters data. And year-over-year growth is expected to be negative for the first time in three years.

Revenue trends have also been weak: Just 50 percent of companies that have reported have beaten estimates on revenue, compared with the 62 percent average, he said.

Warnings continue to come in for third-quarter reports, helping to drag down earnings estimates for the period. Several of those warnings have come from Kohl's (KSS.N) and other retailers, which do not report results until early November.

"For a lot of companies, particularly the multinationals that rely on global growth, I suppose China and Europe are at the heart of their fears," Meckler said.

Europe was cited more than any other reason for negative forecasts from S&P 500 companies for the third quarter, a Thomson Reuters survey showed, but China is a growing concern.

The slowdown in China's economy is expected to have one of the biggest effects on earnings in the U.S. technology sector, which had been among the earnings leaders. Since July 1, tech has seen a 10.4 percent drop in estimates, second worst only to materials - which is also affected by overseas demand.

Among companies guiding lower for the fourth quarter was software maker Adobe Systems (ADBE.O). It cited a faster-than-expected shift to subscriptions by customers.

Aluminum company Alcoa Inc (AA.N), which did not give a fourth-quarter earnings forecast, lowered its global aluminum consumption outlook to 6 percent growth, from 7 percent previously for 2012, and cited China as the main factor.

With results in from just 34 S&P 500 companies, estimates for earnings show a decline of 2.5 percent from a year ago, down from an October 1 forecast for a 2.1 percent fall.

If the percentage of companies beating earnings expectations stays at 59 percent, it would be the weakest earnings beat rate for any quarter since the fourth quarter of 2008, said Thomson Reuters earnings analyst Greg Harrison.

Estimates for the fourth quarter show S&P 500 earnings growth of 9.6 percent, down slightly from an Oct 1. estimate for growth of 9.9 percent, Thomson Reuters data showed.

Analysts said stocks could be in for more losses if the trend continues. The S&P 500 .SPX is down 0.2 percent since Wednesday, the day after Alcoa reported, and is off 3.1 percent since its September 14 intraday high for the year.

But Mike Jackson, founder of Denver-based investment firm T3 Equity Labs, believes the pessimism that has seeped into the market in recent weeks is overstated.

"Analysts overreact more negatively and lag positively," he said.

He sees S&P 500 industrials and telecommunications as sectors most likely to surprise to the upside on third-quarter earnings, along with energy, which has seen a big slide in earnings estimates.

(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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Author Hilary Mantel poses with her book ''Wolf Hall'' after winning the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction at the Guildhall in London October 6, 2009.

LONDON | Fri Oct 12, 2012 7:56am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Hilary Mantel could become the first woman to win the coveted Man Booker Prize for fiction twice with her historical novel "Bring Up the Bodies", the bookmakers' favorite alongside Will Self's "Umbrella".

The annual literary award to an author from the Commonwealth, Zimbabwe or Ireland will be handed out at a glitzy dinner in London on Tuesday, and the build-up this year has been dominated by 60-year-old Mantel.

She won the Booker in 2009 with "Wolf Hall", her acclaimed 650-page historical novel charting Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in King Henry VIII's court, and is in contention again for the sequel.

Were she to win, she would become not only the first female the "do the double" but also the first British writer. South Africa-born J.M. Coetzee and Australian Peter Carey have won the prize twice.

"There has been discussion, I know, about the pros and cons of Mantel advancing so far in the prize again so soon," said Peter Stothard, chair of the Man Booker judging panel and editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

"The judges noted Mantel's even greater mastery of method now," he added.

Mantel could be back in the frame yet again in 2015, when the third and final installment of her Cromwell trilogy, "The Mirror and the Light", is due to hit the shelves.

"MOVING AND DRAINING"

The author has admitted that despite the trilogy's critical and commercial success so far, much was still riding on the final chapter of a 10-year writing odyssey.

"If I get the third book right then in a sense my whole life will have come right," she told Reuters in June. "But if I don't, then I am going to see it as a failure. In my mind it is all one long project."

Self's Umbrella was described by Stothard as "both moving and draining", a reference to some 400 pages without paragraph breaks or chapter divisions.

But he added that the tale about a misdiagnosed woman in a north London mental hospital would prove "much less difficult than at first it seems" to those who stuck with it.

Mantel and Self have taken turns at the top of bookmakers' betting lists.

Mantel edged out Self in odds offered by Paddy Power on Thursday with Bring Up the Bodies at 6/4 after leap-frogging Umbrella at 9/4.

But on Friday, Ladbrokes said Self had attracted a series of bets in the last two days making him 2/1 "hot" favorite ahead of Mantel at 5/2.

The other four shortlisted writers are Deborah Levy ("Swimming Home"), Malaysia's Tan Twan Eng ("The Garden of Evening Mists") and first-time novelists Alison Moore ("The Lighthouse") and Indian author Jeet Thayil ("Narcopolis").

The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives a cheque for 50,000 pounds ($80,000), international literary kudos and, perhaps most importantly, a significant spike in sales.

Research by the Guardian newspaper showed that Mantel's Wolf Hall, for example, sold 35,900 copies before the award was announced and nearly 600,000 afterwards.

The year before, Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger" had sold just 5,703 copies before it won the Booker, rising nearly a hundredfold to 551,061 afterwards.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Steve Addison)

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A re-creation of Henry VIII's Imperial Crown is seen in this undated handout picture released in London October 8, 2012.

LONDON | Mon Oct 8, 2012 9:11am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - More than 450 years after adorning one of Britain's most famous regal heads, the lost crown of Henry VIII has been re-created at the monarch's former palace on the outskirts of London.

The crown, which was melted down in 1649 to swell government coffers following Oliver Cromwell's triumph over royal forces in England's civil war, has been assembled from detailed descriptions and portraits of the time.

Recorded as the "kingis crowne of golde" in a royal inventory in 1521, it was worn at the coronations of Henry's children Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, and later at those of James I and Charles I.

The replica weighs 3 kg (6.6 lbs) and is hand-crafted with 344 jewels and pearls. It will take center stage at Henry's Hampton Court Palace home when its Chapel Royal opens this month after seven years of restoration.

Simone Sagi, spokeswoman for Hampton Court, said the crown would only rarely have been seen in public.

"It was only worn on very major occasions such as Epiphany, and would have been worn on the processional route at Hampton Court Palace", she told Reuters.

The re-creation of the crown had involved a large variety of different teams and experts, including Harry Collins who retired this year as Crown jeweller.

It goes on display from October 27.

(Reporting by Stephen Eisenhammer)

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Mon Oct 8, 2012 2:22pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - Judy Garland's blue-and-white pinafore from the beloved classic "The Wizard of Oz" is going up for auction, where it is expected to sell for more than a half a million dollars, auctioneers said on Monday.

The outfit, consisting of the gingham dress and white puffy-sleeved blouse, which Garland wore throughout the 1939 film, will be sold next month at Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, the auction house said in a statement.

Julien's estimated the outfit would sell for between $400,000 and $600,000, but similarly iconic Hollywood costumes have fetched many times the pre-sale expectations in recent years.

President Darren Julien told Reuters the dress, by MGM's famous costume designer, Adrian, had not been offered for sale, nor even publicly seen, since MGM costume designer Kent Warner sold it at Christie's in 1981.

"It's one of those key pieces that I'm sure collectors all over the world are going to be after," said pop culture expert Laura Woolley of the Collector's Lab, an appraisal service for collectors, museums and other institutions, in a YouTube clip posted by Julien's.

"This is one piece that everybody recognizes instantly," she said of the dress prominently featured in the Technicolor musical, which is still hugely popular with both children and adults nearly 75 years after it was made.

Another of Garland's dresses used in test shots for the film soared to nearly $1 million at auction last year, its $910,000 price more than 10 times the $60,000 to $80,000 estimate.

At the same sale of costumes from film star Debbie Reynolds' collection, which took in nearly $23 million, Marilyn Monroe's iconic "subway dress" from 1955 movie "The Seven Year Itch" sold for $4.6 million, or $5.5 million including commission and tax.

The "Wizard of Oz" dress will go on public exhibition at Julien's in Beverly Hills from November 5-8 ahead of the two-day auction.

Other Hollywood memorabilia on offer at the November 9-10 sale include the white strapless Edith Head gown worn by Elizabeth Taylor in "A Place in the Sun," which is estimated at $20,000 to $30,000, and a Cecil Beaton triptych of Marilyn Monroe, which hung in Monroe's New York apartment, estimated at $35,000 to $40,000.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud in New York, editing by Jill Serjeant and Andre Grenon)

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LONDON | Tue Oct 9, 2012 6:54am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - A toy gun-wielding child, New York high society at play and bored Tokyo commuters are just a few of the startling images at a new Tate Modern exhibition exploring the relationship between two of the 20th century's leading street-life photographers.

"William Klein + Daido Moriyama" features more than 300 vintage prints, paintings, original photo books and installations by U.S. photographers Klein and Japan's Moriyama in a show which runs from October 10 until January 20.

"We wanted to do a show where you have the (photo) book at the heart of the exhibition, particularly William Klein's book about New York, which is probably the most influential photo book of all time...and the idea of combining with Moriyama was natural because he was very influenced by William," co-curator Simon Baker told Reuters at a preview.

The two photographers are known for stark and candid photographs of street-life in the 1960s.

Huge black and white murals pasted to the Tate Modern's walls greet visitors, depicting the daily lives of people in New York, Tokyo and Moscow, capturing scenes of high society at a ball, children outside a candy store or commuters at a station.

Laid out as two halves of a conversation held between the two artists, visitors may recognize one of Klein's more famous portraits for fashion magazine Vogue on the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, where two elegantly dressed models wearing contrasting monochrome dresses are seen strutting on a zebra crossing surrounded by pedestrians and motorists.

Another picture, daubed with thick yellow paint, shows a young boy holding a toy gun aggressively towards the camera aiming directly at Klein, who produced a series of photo essays on New York, Rome and Tokyo each with his usual trademark wide-angle lens and candid close-ups of its citizens.

Moriyama's evocative images of Tokyo's actors and night performers, bored commuters at train stations, and a lone dog, which came to represent the artist in his later years, make up the second half of the show.

Rows of frames each featuring the carefully arranged juxtapositions of photographs from Moriyama's first photo book, "Japan: A Photo Theatre", are laid out page by page for visitors against a vast wall.

The show also features a series of close-ups of seemingly ordinary objects from clothing, machinery and flowers that are transformed with a play on light and shadow into surreal yet recognizable images.

If visitors manage to get some feeling of Japan or Tokyo in particular, then this would be great, Moriyama told Reuters, whose use of blurring, scratches and grainy visual effects in his book of abstract compositions "Sayonara Photography" has made it a lasting favorite.

"With most artists, they'll always say that (their) latest work is the best, or the next one they're producing is the best but at the same time, having looked around here, the one thing that does stick in my memory all the time, is 'Sayonara Photography'."

"That book, that collection...those are the ones that stayed with me throughout my career," Moriyama added.

The series has been described as some of the wildest photographs ever made, Baker added, who worked alongside co-curators Juliet Bingham and Kasia Redzisz.

"The photograph is being really pushed to the limit of what it can represent and I think this is something that is really important in both artists' work."

(Reporting by Li-mei Hoang, editing by Paul Casciato)

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