Detail: This exhibition features 48 photographs by Ishiuchi Miyako of clothing and accessories left behind by victims of the 1945 atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Unlike the black-and-white images most often associated with Hiroshima, showing devastated landscapes emptied of humanity, Ishiuchi’s colour photographs represent her own deeply personal, intimate encounters with everyday objects that, unlike the people to whom they once belonged, continue to exist in the present. Testaments to a profound trauma, they also illuminate the beauty, diversity, and complexity of individual lives in ways immediately accessible to contemporary audiences.
Ishiuchi writes: "From the 19,000 items made available to me [at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum], I chose things that at one time had touched skin and bodies, and photographed them…. A flower-patterned dress colourfully dyed. A puff of gathered, shiny skirt woven of silk thread. Cool-looking, thin, Georgette materials that once shed the summer heat. Used kimonos transformed into blouses and cut to make air-raid hoods…. These objects, exposed to the heat and radioactive rays of a fire ball that suddenly appeared one summer morning, and relinquished by the victims of the atomic bombing, have been on earth as long as I have. When I came to realise the coincidence, I caught my breath at their vivid hues and distinct textures, their flaws and complicated detail. These are too deeply linked to daily lives to regard as ‘historical materials.’"
Through the exhibition and a wide range of public programming, MOA will provide a forum for examining issues of war, trauma, and remembrance, and the role objects play in our collective memory.