Fumi Homma's photographs will make you long for your early teenage years

Japanese, London-based photographer Fumi Homma has a photographic eye that would fill anyone with nostalgia for their early teens, portraying that adolescent feeling with poignant merit. Mostly captured in the golden hour of an early evening, you can easily imagine the teens featured are in those joyful few hours during the summer months where you’ve finished school for the day, but you’re not expected home for dinner yet.

These hours, dependent on where you grew up, are usually spent in the same places up and down the UK. If you’re by the seaside, the arcade is a definite hang-out or your time was spent sitting uncomfortably on pebbled beaches. Parks, wherever you were, are a definite fixture, as Fumi so elegantly points out with a group of lads who have climbed on top of a goal post. Museums, the corners of pubs or youth clubs, and one scout with a beaming smile are also all included.

Fumi’s introduction to photography began when he was studying abroad in the UK and met with a friend who works as a photographer in Japan. “He taught me how to use a camera and lighting etc and once I finished my term of studying he asked me to be his assistant and I started to work as a photographer.” Not studying the medium academically may be the reason behind the natural honesty in Fumi’s work, naming elements such as “cosy and pop-like old American animations,” as his influences. “Those characters and colours influenced a lot of my taste, and also the American colour photographers like William Eggleston and Joel Meyerowitz. All the stuff they’ve taken and their approach to a photograph and how to print is very inspiring.”

Fumi tells It’s Nice That that his view behind the lens is “always looking for an interesting moment, people and stuff." The photographer’s approach is artistically driven despite the documentary focus of his work. “I’m always thinking I am shooting a photograph, not an image. I don’t want to forget that feeling of sweet happiness, like when you open a photo diary…I always want to make a story that has a happy ending as the creator.”