For Hideka Tonomura, Love Lies Beyond Taboos

A personal story, that of her mother and her intimate life, is the subject that Hideka Tonomura delves into through her lens. The series mama love, published in 2008, is composed of two parts. The first, presented here, compiles photographs that are sombre, intriguing, poetic, and sensual.

The artist, born in 1979 and represented by Zen Foto Gallery in Tokyo, immerses the public in her personal archives that both catch the attention and make the viewer feel uncomfortable.

A yearning for love

The photographs assembled by Hideka Tonomura in mama love do not seek to convey a message. This is more of a personal testimony, linked to a moment: when the artist became aware of her mother’s sexuality that revealed and exhibited her nature as a woman. From these moments in which the mother reveals herself in front of her daughter’s camera, an unusual sense of complicity is born. The artist addresses taboos here, that of women’s autonomy in her wants and their desires. mama love is an intimate portrait of the photographer’s mother’s love life.

The first part of the series, in black and white, shows Hideka Tonomura’s mother next to her lover. The artist does not show the face of the latter, instead focusing the viewer’s attention on that of her mother. These photographs, somewhere between an intrusion on privacy and a personal archive, cause her to stand to the side, above the couple, who appear to be in the throes of lovemaking.

Hideka Tonomura explains their complicity in an interview with the website Mirrored Society. ‘My mother’s affair was an act of sudden revenge because she was suffering from my father’s violence for a long time and also had stage four stomach cancer—she wanted to retrieve her own self as a woman. I was there to witness the affair so I became her accomplice. But what I found was the love between me and my mother in the photographs. For the first time in my life, after looking closely at the photographs, I realised that I am loved by my mother.’

In a subsequent work, They Called me Yukari (2013), the artist compiles photographs taken between 2007 and 2009, dedicated to her time spent working as a hostess in bars, her sexual experiences, and her new life in Tokyo.

mama love (2008), a series by Hideka Tonomura, is published by Akaaaka.