Memory of War Defeat, Ruins on Dockyard in Toyokawa, Aichi

Shomei Tomatsu Japanese

Not on view

Upon close inspection, what seems initially to be a starry sky resolves into the corroded wall of a bombed munitions factory—a powerful symbol of the deterioration of martial ambition in Japan. In the wake of World War II, Tomatsu and many of his Japanese contemporaries made brooding photographs—gritty records of a country reeling from atomic devastation and the cultural fallout of military occupation. Visually dense and rife with political implications, his work addresses the degree to which defeat pierced the national psyche.

Memory of War Defeat, Ruins on Dockyard in Toyokawa, Aichi, Shomei Tomatsu (Japanese, Aichi, Nagoya 1930–2012 Naha, Okinawa), Gelatin silver print

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