75 years ago, Japan was shaken by two atomic bombs, bringing a swift end to the Second World War. Powerful shockwaves and firestorms destroyed buildings and infrastructure; many thousands of people lost their lives. The catalogue before you now brings together a collection of rarely or never-before seen photographs taken on the day of the bombing itself or immediately afterwards. The photographs in the illustrated portion of the book are negatives, leading viewers along a path of more complex and contemplative observation, one that goes far beyond the matter of simply illustrating and reassessing historical events. The artistic-aesthetic qualities of these photographs move even if only briefly to the foreground, provoking the observer in ways that span the entire spectrum of his moral, medical, philosophical, and artistic-aesthetic understanding. Very little time elapsed between the moment these pictures were taken and the creation of the historical prints exhibited here; the prints themselves, therefore, bear an aura of the events they record, aided in part by the slugs and stamps often found printed and applied to the reverse. The prints act as mediators between the photograph and the viewer, between 1945 and 2020.
