Takashi Homma
Ohne Titel
Ohne Titel, 1995-1998
From Tokyo Suburbia
C-Print, 50.5 x 61 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, gift Takashi Homma and Galerie Bob van Orsouw
2012-030-010
© Takashi Homma
b. 1962 (Tokyo, JP), lives and works in Tokyo, JP
Exhibiting since the mid 1990s, Takashi Homma has produced a number of small artist’s editions as well as some major publications. He also works for magazines such as i-D, Purple Prose, Purple Fashion, Ray Gun and several Japanese magazines. Like the works of many of his contemporaries, his photographs are bright and colourful, with a certain levity, even nonchalance, towards their subject matter – as though he had snapped something in passing that is both important and trivial at the same time. Yet, for all his lightness of touch, Homma, unlike many others, touches a nerve in today’s society. His first book, Babyland, addressed the infantilization of everyday culture using images of girl groups, soft toys, and the consumer industry specifically aimed at kids. Tokyo Suburbia strikes a similar tone, though this is a harsher, more exposed, more desperate project. On the fringes of society, the damage to the social and economic fabric of contemporary society is all the more obvious, particularly the discrepancies between individual dreams and reality.