Profile

Takashi Homma was born in 1962 in Tokyo.


He studied photography at College of Art, Nihon University, but left in 1984 to take up a job as an in-house photographer at a Tokyo advertising agency.


In the early 1990s Homma lived in London, where he worked for i-D. On his return to Japan he worked in many different genres within photography, including magazines and advertisements.


In 1999 he received the 24th Kimura Ihei Photography Award for his series Tokyo Suburbia, in which he focused his gaze on suburban residential areas in and around Tokyo. His photographic style is quiet, influenced by William Eggleston’s color photography. Homma strives to eliminate any exaggeration or dramatization, giving a result often characterized as honest.


In 2004 he published the collection of the traditional photographer Takuma Nakahira, titled Kiwamete Yoi Fuukei: Short Hope: Takuma Nakahira and supervised a video by the same name. Two years later the Swiss publisher Nieves brought out the short and intimate Tokyo and my Daughter; 32 colour images of a young girl from birth to the age of six, intertwined with images from the city.


In 2008, already widely published in Japan, Homma became the first Japanese contemporary artist to be published by Aperture, his first international retrospect.

In recent years Homma has left the urban centre to turn his lens towards nature. In New Waves – photographs taken at the North Shore in Hawaii – he captures the calm and changing appearances of the waves. In Trails he catches the traces of deer-hunting in the deep, snowy mountains.


Starting this year (2011), the first retrospective of Homma’s work will tour museums in Japan for two years, presenting the entire scope of his oeuvre.