Banana Yoshimoto kindly gave a book review of Hideka Tonomura's "Soul Trip". Thank you so much!
We would like to express our gratitude to novelist Banana Yoshimoto for her thoughtful review of Hideka Tonomura's photobook Soul Trip. We are honoured to respectfully publish it here.
What the Soul Saw
Banana YoshimotoThe photobook Soul Trip was amazing.
I can’t explain what was so great about it. I was astonished. I think it was because it faithfully depicted the truth of how the flow of the human mind and the flow of one’s surroundings are perfectly connected. It even made me think that I understood the meaning of a photobook for the first time.
Tonomura’s photographs, like her extraordinary life itself, are something that ordinary people in ordinary life would never see and, if anything, would rather not see.
And, of course, my peaceful daily life too, is devoid of anything close to her photographs. Sadly nothing. That’s probably why people say my novels are warm and fluffy, but I just don’t have anything.
But deep inside I know. Tonomura and I share a similar aspiration to achieve great heights. Despite the vast differences in our lives and life experiences, we find common ground in our understanding of each other on this particular point. When we look at each other’s works, we can feel how we risked our lives without compromise and without being carried away. That is the common ground of art. Art has one purpose: to awaken people and to help them see the beauty of the world a little bit more clearly. Each photograph in this book, which appears to have been selected at random, contains an unusual amount of emotion, dreams, despair and hope. Tonomura has truly reached an incredible level.
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