{"id":7,"date":"2020-11-15T22:45:43","date_gmt":"2020-11-16T03:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/?p=7"},"modified":"2021-01-22T17:25:19","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T22:25:19","slug":"object-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/2020\/11\/15\/object-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Object #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

T\u014dmatsu Sho\u0304mei \u6771\u677e\u7167\u660e (1930\u20132012)<\/span><\/p>\n

Untitled<\/em>, from the series 11:02<\/em>, <\/span>Nagasaki, 1962, printed 1988<\/span><\/p>\n

Gelatin silver print<\/span><\/p>\n

image: 41.8 x 51 cm (16 7\/16 x 20 1\/16 in.)<\/span><\/p>\n

sheet: 28.5 x 40.8 cm (11 1\/4 x 16 1\/16 in.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, gift of Robert Gambee, Class of 1964<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Estate of Shomei Tomatsu<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

This close-up image of the scarred face of Yamaguchi Senji \u5c71\u53e3\u4ed9\u4e8c (1930\u20132013), a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 and later a leader of anti-nuclear movement, was taken in 1962 when T\u014dmatsu visited Nagasaki seventeen years after the bombing. Yamaguchi\u2019s face was portrayed under a pointed light source from one side of his head. The resulted sharp contrast between dark and light helps reveal the refined details of the texture of his scars and creates an unsettling effect psychologically and emotionally. T\u014dmatsu recalled that when he first met with the atomic bomb survivors in Nagasaki, he felt so shocked emotionally that he could barely manage his camera and only wanted to leave.[1]<\/a> Yet in this close-up image, T\u014dmatsu forces the view of what he once wanted to turn away from. By focusing on one fragmented and augmented body part, T\u014dmatsu invites the viewer to enter an extremely intimate memory about a traumatic historical event through the physical traces that it has forever left on Yamaguchi\u2019s body. Unlike many other photographs that approach the atomic bombing as mainly social and historical event, T\u014dmatsu\u2019s photograph acknowledges it as personal experience and bodily suffering that still haunt Nagasaki and those who have lived through the event in the unfolding present.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, this photograph also exhibits a calculated sense of emotional detachment. Yamaguchi\u2019s face is obscured in the shadow, and so does his identity other than the label of a bombing survivor. His static pose, together with the straightforward composition and the simple, clean backdrop setting, creates a subtle sense of calmness and aloofness. To some extent, Yamaguchi\u2019s scarred head is photographed almost like an emotionless monument, on which exist some marks that silently memorialize the traumatic historical event. This calculated emotional prudence interwoven with an extreme physical closeness enables the viewer to approach the photograph both as a historical archive from a distanced, collective perspective and as personal memories from an intimate, private point of view. This photograph thus becomes a site where Nagasaki\u2019s past overlaps with its present and where the personal intersects with the collective.<\/span><\/p>\n

This photograph of Yamaguchi\u2019s scarred face was included in T\u014dmatsu\u2019s much-appreciated photobook 11:02<\/em>, first published in 1966 and republished in 1968. T\u014dmatsu\u2019s story with Nagasaki started on a winter night of 1960, when he ran into two representatives of Gensuiky\u014d \u539f\u6c34\u5354 (short for Gensuibaku Kinshi Nihon kyougikai \u539f\u6c34\u7206\u7981\u6b62\u65e5\u672c\u5354\u8b70\u4f1a, the Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs) in the office of VIVO and heard about their project of a photographic book for the market of the United States and Russia.[2]<\/a> The fruit of this project was the book Hiroshima-Nagasaki Document 1961<\/em>, which includes photographs of Hiroshima by the renowned photographer Domon Ken and those of Nagasaki by T\u014dmatsu, who was then still a junior photographer. After the completion of the Gensuiky\u014d project, T\u014dmatsu returned to Nagasaki for several times in the following years, and photographed people, objects, and the land of Nagasaki in more idiosyncratic styles that distinguished T\u014dmatsu\u2019s Nagasaki photographs from the numerous photographs about atomic bombings at the time. These photographs, along with some that were already included in Hiroshima-Nagasaki Document 1961<\/em>, were compiled into T\u014dmatsu\u2019s photobook 11:02<\/em>, the title of which refers to the local time when the atomic bombing took place in Nagasaki\u2013\u2013as the first photograph of the photobook shows, for many people in Nagasaki, their time stopped at 11:02 am on August 9, 1945 (Fig. 1-1).[3]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n