moom bookshop

Winner of the 4th FUGENSHA Photography Award
Eri Morita “Moon Rainbow”

Eri Morita is a photographer from Kumamoto Prefecture, currently based in San Diego, California. In 2024, she received the Grand Prize in the 4th FUGENSHA Photography Award among a record number of 192 applicants. As a result, her work Moon Rainbow will be published by Fugensha in July 2025.

This body of work documents the 18 years of living with her family of three. After giving birth to her daughter in New York, they moved to Maui, Hawaii, where they began their journey to find a place to put down roots as a family. After dotted around Tokyo, Shanghai, Kumamoto, Miyazaki, and then drifted to Santa Monica, California, they traversed the coastline and finally settled in the seaside city of San Diego.

The moment Morita saw the rhythmic flickering light on the monitor during a prenatal checkup — a child laughing for the first time, standing for the first time, speaking for the first time, and gradually acquiring values. It can be said each step was an endless surprise and an ongoing reinvigoration of experience for the artist. She sought to understand the family’s existence through the act of photography— a complex entity imbued with joy, comfort, suffering, and loneliness.

With a clear gaze and distance, Morita captured her family over nearly two decades. The resulting body of work transcends the genre of private-documentary, connecting to a universal narrative of family that crosses boundaries. "Happiness, miscommunication, peace, loneliness—these all exist in the same place at the same time.

“Joy, misunderstanding, comfort, loneliness — all exist in the same place, at the same time. Family is something complex, often painful, and yet irreplaceable. Even now, I find it mysterious. But I’ve come to learn that even if we don’t fully understand each other, we can still stay close." (extract from the text)