Hiroshima..the lost photographs.
Written by David WhiteAll about a set of found images of the devastation wrought upon Hiroshima in 1945.
“The lack of visual evidence of the atom bomb‚Äôs effect has helped us to forget its devastating impact. To see is to remember. Up until now, there have been few publicly available images of what happened on the ground when the first atomic bomb exploded. As a result, Hiroshima has become, as the novelist¬†Mary McCarthy wrote in 1946, ‚Äúa kind of hole in human history.‚Äù
“Since the invention of the camera in 1839, photography has marched in lockstep with death, especially death experienced in war. Starting withAlexander Gardener‚Äôs and¬†Matthew Brady‚Äôs images of the American dead at Gettysburg, through¬†Robert Capa‚Äôs visceral images of the Spanish Civil War (made more immediate as a result of the camera having been freed from the restraints of the tripod), images of death and destruction have served to document war‚Äôs brutality.”
A very powerful and evocative piece.
dw
Discussion (1 Comment)
I’ll write a post on this at some point David, but for me its like a new form of history started with photography … and that photography has never served humanity so importantly as when documenting crimes against humanity and in particular war … which is why world war 1 and onwards are so visceral.
When we remember Hiroshima, we remember an image, the mushroom cloud.