Her real name is Hiromi Toshikawa, but she is known throughout the world as Hiromix. An individual who has made her way from the camera lens to fashion, film, advertising and music. She is the one responsible for the girl photographic diary trend in the early Nineties and the start of massive use of mono-use cameras by teenagers, as well as self-portraits. Following her style, for many young (and even not-so-young) people, cameras became a new toy.
This led to the flowering in the mid-1990s of fashion and style photography magazines aimed at the younger generation which, in their pages, focused on portraits of "the man in the street", the primary entertainment being to be seen. The automatic photo machines called "purikura", (abbreviation of Print Club), spread everywhere-in amusement arcades, supermarkets, department stores and other places young people gathered-and offered backgrounds that were "kawaii" (cute) or taken from the most famous "anime" (cartoons) in order to impress young girls, above all. In fact, they became a "must" (and not just for adolescents) to collect mini-photo souvenirs with which everyone filled personal diaries, as well as the pages of magazines.
In this context, Hiromix became a veritable pop star and through her photography series as well as her personal presence immortalized in magazines, newspapers and television she became the highly-successful harbinger of new style. In fact, Hiromix's professional evolution, following her sudden success when she was still a student, occurred on a number of fronts in the world of entertainment, including not only photography but also as a model in advertising campaigns, director of music videos, film extra, photographer of music CD covers and DJ.
Among Hiromix's photographs, many are based on self-portrait, a genre that has marked her work since its very inception: her seductive figure reflected in the mirror, close ups, shots of isolated parts of her body such as hands, feet and eyes. Just her and her camera. But the general atmosphere that emanates from her works is an almost internal vision. Reflections-from the rain on asphalt, on the windows of a car or at home, that offer a hazy glimpse of the landscape in the background. The embroidered edge of a curtain lit by the sun that reflects on the floor, drops of water against the light or the waves of the sea. Banal details of everyday life, ones that we don't even remember and that flow by invisibly, but which sometimes stick in our minds like a "déjà vu": a plate with the leftovers from breakfast, a metal ashtray on the table, a vase of faded flowers, the glass teardrops of a chandelier, a glimpse of a road, a corner in the city, an ordinary panorama.
Footprints of life and things which Hiromix has always caught on paper with simplicity and naturalness, conferring on them a new value. Remnants of everyday life that Hiromax sums up in just a few lines, defining them as "things that are not seen" in the introduction to her 1998 book entitled Hiromax:
"Youth is transparency and beauty. We do not yet have any experience. And the world offers us only things that are unacceptable. I believe more than anyone in what is not seen. Many unknown worlds await us. Surrounded by people we love, we smile a smile that is without fear. Perhaps it is to keep all this in check that I take photographs of myself."

© Hiromix