Melissa Faithful for Art-Sheep
Tomohide Ikeya is a Japanese photographer who creates mysterious, ethereal scenarios that find her characters battling with water, other people and/or themselves. Her series Moon and Breath discuss the seminal issues of life and death, and how life is the process of avoiding death. Her majestic subjects are people who on their own, or with other people, struggle for a breath, a touch, a sign.
As the photographer writes on her website, the element of water is the most basic element of life. “I only became aware of the existence of life and death after connecting deeply to the world of water. This happened long before I started photography: by chance, I was invited to go diving, and when I saw that underwater world it captured me at once. The various phenomena and life forms which exist only in the water and the beautiful play of water and light brought me a strong sense of elation and excitement.”
