20
B+WBarakei (Ordeal by Roses), No.16. 1961 by Eikoh Hosoe © Eikoh HosoeEXHIBITION OF THE MONTH
After the Second World War Japan redefined itself from being a broken
nation to a global superpower in just 20 years. A new show spotlights this
transformation through 100 B&W images. Anna Bonita Evans reports.
NEWS
O
n 15 August,
1945, Japanese
photographer
Hiroshi Hamaya
went outside, looked up, and took
a picture of the sun. This was
his reaction to hearing his home
country had surrendered to allied
forces after the atomic bombs
Fat Man and Little Boy had
been dropped on Nagasaki and
Hiroshima days earlier. Hugely
powerful in context, The Sun
on the Day of Defeat is the first
image in Metamorphosis of Japan
After the War, a new show at
Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, that
looks at Japanese photography
from 1945 to 1964.
By choosing images from this
specific time frame, curatorsTsuaguo Tada and Marc Feustel
effectively portray Japan’s
massive reconstruction. In less
than 20 years it evolved from an
empire largely isolated from the
rest of the world, to a country
suffering the cataclysm of war, to
a democratised state, to finally its
re-emergence as a peaceful and
economically thriving nation that
hosted the 1964 Olympic Games.
Most countries change over time
but few have experienced such
dramatic changes in a period as
short as this.
The exhibition consists of
100 B&W images by 11 leading
Japanese photographers. Their
work, displayed in simple thin
silver frames, is a compelling
record of the country’s psyche.Divided into three rooms loosely
based on different eras, the show
begins with The Aftermath of
the War (mid 40s to mid 50s),
leading on to Between Tradition
and Modernity (largely the late
50s) and finishing with Towards
a New Japan (from early 60s to
the Tokyo Olympics).A
new freedom of artistic
expression came to
Japan after the Second
World War. Young
photographers abandoned the
pre-1945 romantic pictorialism
for a more personal and
immediate approach; who was
behind the viewfinder became
the focus. More interpretations
of the conditions surroundingthem than objective historical
documentations, the pictures
selected for Open Eye Gallery’s
show reflect the Japanese creative
community’s response to this
turbulent time.
Along with Ken Domon’s
portraits of the Hiroshima
bomb survivors, one of the most
moving pieces in the exhibition is
Kikuji Kawada’s series The Map,
which includes images taken a
decade after the atomic bomb hit
Hiroshima. Discarded memorial
cards, a soiled Japanese flag and
pictures of the stained and flaking
ceiling of the Atomic Bomb Dome
are poignant fragments that make
up Japan’s experience of war.
After surrendering in 1945
Japan was occupied by the allied20-21_EOTM_175 ER/MB.indd 2020-21_EOTM_175 ER/MB.indd 20 18/02/2015 16:3018/02/2015 16:30