shashasha

Keiko Nomura’s 2006 photobook “Bloody Moon” pursues four different mental images, each of which eludes manifestation. Though distinct in their nature, Nomura brings these pursuits together into a single, resonating work in which each photograph—though fragmentary at first sight—forms part of a journey into her memories and her roots.

Shot in Okinawa, where Nomura’s grandparents were born and raised, Amami Oshima, Taiwan, India, Tokyo, Hawai’i and other islands and places, “Bloody Moon” shows us exotic moods, portraits of humans and animals, eroticism and intimacy, deep nature and urban landscapes, concrete reality and hints of another world, as Nomura deals with the indistinctness of existence, her relationship with nature, encounters with death and the vastness of different time scales.

The book concludes with four afterwords by the artist (included in Japanese & English).

“The ocean is transparent and reflective like glass. Emerged fully in the water, where the lukewarm temperature emancipates the body from gravity, I float freely, as if flying, horizontally and vertically.”
― from Keiko Nomura’s afterword “Running across the sky, bloody moon”