Takashi Homma observes his daily life through the poses of his cat.
A cat wanders, perches, and lounges in various spaces around a humble Tokyo apartment. It is perfectly tranquil in its surroundings, simply going about its daily life. In one image, the cat lays serenely amidst pot plants on the balcony, squinting in morning sunlight; in others, it balances precariously on the edge of the bath, snuggles beneath a sleeping bag, plays in a cardboard box, hides beneath an open umbrella. Here and there, evidence of the cat's fellow inhabitant in the apartment—a man, who also happens to be the internationally renowned photographer Takashi Homma—creeps into the frame. A knee, a foot, a shock of blonde hair, half of a face. There are artefacts of his life and practice too. Framed photographic prints draped in bubblewrap lean against a wall; a tangle of musical effects pedals make for colourful constellation against the cool blue of the carpet.
Many have written of the unique atmosphere and energy of Takashi Homma's pictures. His photographic mannerisms are so light, so subtly empathetic to his subjects, that we all but dissolve into the world he creates. The photographs that populate This Is Not My Cat are no exception. Unencumbered by a sense of fussiness or perfection, these images are casual, diaristic, and quotidian. As viewers, we become part of the images and their atmosphere, rather than poring over their details. They are about feeling as much as they are about looking.
The title—
This Is Not My Cat—seems multipart. Whereas the anomaly imbedded in Homma's iconic photobook
Tokyo and My Daughter is that the girl pictured was not in fact his own child, here, his own cat is recast as belonging to another. Or perhaps it is that a cat's independence cannot be truly curbed. They quietly live, play, and exist alongside us. They move through life in our shadow, but forever in their own world.
Takashi Homma (born 1962, lives and works in Tokyo) is one of the most internationally recognised Japanese photographers active at the front lines of contemporary photography today. Homma's photography, possessing a uniquely cool gaze that rejects any sentimentality and portrays its subject with a characteristic sense of distance and cool tonality, has received acclaim not only in the world of photography but also contemporary art. Homma, who started out in advertising and fashion magazines in the late 1980s, moved to London in the early 90s taking work for legendary cultural magazines like i-D, and came to know there a few photographers who produced their own works by diverse methods. Upon his return to Japan, while making magazine media his foundation as a photographer representative of the 90s, his own photographic works capturing the landscape and people of Tokyo's suburbs were published together in Tokyo Suburbia which was awarded the Kimura Ihei Commemorative Photography Award in 1999. Since then, he has continued to exhibit his innovative work both overseas and domestically and attracted subsequent generations of photographers.
