Trails
Takashi Homma

"Insightful, aesthetically fascinating images that combine a sense of gritty reality with the abstractness of vivid daydreams" – Tokyo Weekender

"An inexorable short circuit of beauty and violence" – Mousse Magazine

"Each photograph is a picture of vivid contrast, resembling paint spilled onto a blank canvas." – The Japan Times

 In this dark and beautiful book, Takashi Homma traces the blood trails of deer killed in Shiretoko National Park on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Like ritualistic stains or calligraphic compositions, the photographs, which Homma made in the winters of 2009 to 2018, are at once abstract and symbolic. Considered by some to be sacred, deer in Japan have controversially faced culls due to their growing population, which upset agricultural communities struggling to protect their crops. To aid their mission in reducing numbers, the government encourages local hunters to take matters into their own hands. Homma photographs the effects – the red vestiges of wild life in the snow.