Home Drama

“Morita’s Home Drama is a pastel-pop, deadpan comedy of young parenthood set in the industrial outskirts of Tokyo, where Morita grew up and her family still lives. In her photos, the roles and responsibilities of parenthood seem perfectly organized yet absurdly overwhelming. Expectant parents with their innocent, blank faces seem like children themselves, surrounded by toys-in-waiting and baby clothes on hangers, suspended like mobiles. The dollhouse atmosphere of their apartments is echoed in images of a playground in a high-rise housing complex. A harbor scene in cheery sunlight has the same innocence, as if the ships were floating in a child’s bath. Several cinematic pictures—of a couple embracing in an office-building plaza, or caught at night in the urban glare of a parking garage—contrast the whimsical and dreamlike with a darker realism, but mostly Morita hews to the playfully hyperreal.” Allen Frame for Bomb Magazine