Following earlier photobooks (“They Called Me Yukari”, “Mama Love”) in which Hideka Tonomura explored the seedier sides of life, her new work “Die of Love” can be seen as her own “theatre of love”: a love story woven from joys, sorrows, difficulties and absurdities. Printed in thick, rich colours on thin, almost vulnerably thin paper, Tonomura's images convey a sense of wavering between hope and despair in life.
 
 
 
“Love has no form
 
If love has a form,
 
let it be a photograph in the end
 
It is nothing but paper
 
Just laugh —
 
Life itself is ridiculous, after all.
 
 
 
Ah, a tragicomedy it is”
 
 
 
— Hideka Tonomura, "Die of Love"