#bare bure boke

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From Ground Zero to Provoke: Trauma and memory in postwar Japanese photography

Toshio Fukada, Hiroshima, 6 August 1945

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/scars-war-conflict-time-photography-tate/ 

Trauma:

‘a wound... and the condition caused by this; traumatism’

as used in psychoanalysis, ‘a disturbing experience which affects the mind or nerves of a person (a mental shock)’

In terms of Hibakusha, literally ‘people affected by the explosion’

“Collective trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways.”

“A gap between event and representation.”

Jeffrey C. Alexander, Trauma: A Social Theory, Polity, 2013, p6

John Hersey, Hiroshima 1946

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_(book)

The negatives bare the trauma that it is, and their state represents the event.

Barbara Marcon cites Hiro Saito, who describes the position of Japanese society towards the bomb victims as that of ‘viewers of remote suffering’.

Barbara Marcon, ‘Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Eye of the Camera’, Third Text, Vol.23, Issue 6, November 2011, p791

Yoshito Matsushige, Hiroshima, 6 August 1945: People applying cooking oil to their burns

https://www.pinterest.com/ferabadb/wwii-horror/ 

Shannon Stevens argues that the film Gojira (Godzilla) performed a ‘vital therapeutic function for a society traumatized both by atomic bombings and by an oppressive regime that forbade all discussion of that trauma.’

Shannon Stevens, ‘The rhetorical significance of Gojira: Equipment for living through trauma’, in Matthew Edwards (ed), ‘The Atomic Bomb in Japanese Cinema’, Jefferson, N. Carolina: McFarland and Co., 2015, p17

“What I saw in Nagasaki was not merely the scars of war, it was a place where the post-war period had never ended. I thought that the term ruins only referred to the devastated form of cities, but Nagasaki taught me that it could also be applied to human beings.”

Shōmei Tōmatsu cited in Simon Baker, ‘Armageddon in Retrospect’, in ‘Conflict, Time, Photography’, Tate Modern, London, 2014, p197

“Tōmatsu’s accomplishment was not so much to describe a devastated city as to evoke a sense of trauma persisting in a revitalised one.”  

Leo Rubinfien, ‘Echoes of War’ in Shōmei Tōmatsu, ‘Chewing gum and Chocolate’, NY: Aperture, 2014, p186

Shōmei Tōmatsu, 11.02 Nagasaki 1966

https://uk.pinterest.com/ualbarello/shomei-tomatsu/

“Nagasaki has two times. There is 11.02, August 9th 1945. And there is all the times since then. We must not forget either of them.”

Shōmei Tōmatsu, cited in Baker, ‘Armageddon in Retrospect’, ‘Conflict, Time, Photography’, p199

“A dozen years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, out of nowhere a giant black ‘stain’ appeared above the basement ceiling of the Atomic Bomb Dome. Each night the ‘stain’ - which I had seen myself - filled my dreams with horror.”

Kikuji Kawada, cited in Baker, ‘Conflict, Time, Photography’, p199-200

Chewing Gum and Chocolate (2014):

“Culture, riding a mushroom cloud, came in from across the sea. People called it ‘occupation’.

Oh, crooked, narrow streets of Japan! You once had clean unadorned skin. Why do you rush to paint it over? Do you say you have to curry favor with the uninvited guests from across the sea? Like a jester?”

Asahi Camera, April 1959, text from Shōmei Tōmatsu, ‘Chewing Gum and Chocolate’, NY: Aperture, 2015, p5

Provoke (1968-69)

‘are-bure-boke’ (are = rough; bure = blurred (by camera movement); boke = out of focus).

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Takuma Nakahira, For a Language to Come (1970)

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Takuma Nakahira, For a Language to Come (1970)

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