Creator(s): Ishiuchi Miyako (Japanese, born 1947) Title/Date: Yokosuka Story #34, 1976 – 1977 Culture: Japanese Medium: Gelatin silver print Dimensions: Image: 45.2 x 55.7 cm (17 13/16 x 21 15/16 in.) Framed: 54.4 × 65.7 × 4.5 cm (21 7/16 × 25 7/8 × 1 3/4 in.) Accession No. EX.2015.7.94 Copyright: © Ishiuchi Miyako Object Credit: collection of Yokohama Museum of Art Repro Credit: Photo © Yokohama Museum of Art
Although nearly half the people died on the first day, the other half clung to life in desperate shape, only to die from the effect of the burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries compounded by illness and malnutrition. The only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history, the bombings destroyed primarily civilian populations.
Creator(s): Ishiuchi Miyako (Japanese, born 1947) Title/Date: Yokosuka Story #121, 1976 Culture: Japanese Medium: Gelatin silver print Dimensions: Image: 43.7 x 54 cm (17 3/16 x 21 1/4 in.) Sheet: 45.4 x 55.7 cm (17 7/8 x 21 15/16 in.) Accession No. 2009.96.5 Copyright: © Ishiuchi Miyako Object Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
In the decades that followed, the bombings continued to have effect on subsequent generations born into the post-nuclear landscape. Self-taught photographer Ishiuchi Miyako was born two years after the war and stunned the Japanese photography establishment in the late 1970s with grainy, haunting, black-and-white images of Yokosuka—the city where Miyako spent her childhood and where the United States established an important naval base in 1945.
Working prodigiously over the next forty years, Miyako has created an incredible body of work that has been collected for “Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows”, now on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, through February 21, 2016, and is published in a book by the same name.
Creator(s): Ishiuchi Miyako (Japanese, born 1947) Title/Date: Yokosuka Story #73, 1977 Culture: Japanese Medium: Gelatin silver print Dimensions: Image: 43.7 x 53.7 cm (17 3/16 x 21 1/8 in.) Sheet: 45.4 x 55.7 cm (17 7/8 x 21 15/16 in.) Accession No. 2009.96.3 Copyright: © Ishiuchi Miyako Object Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
As Amanda Maddox writes for the book, “Ishiuchi Miyako’s identity is defined by war and steeped in myth. Her parents met during wartime, fell in love, and conceived her during the sengo shokugo, or initial postwar period. According to Ishiuchi, she was already in utero when her mother learned that her first husband, who had been sent off to way and presumed dead, was still alive. In 1947, the year Ishiuchi was born (and her mother’s divorce became official), Japan issued a new constitution renouncing war. Ishiuchi entered the world at a time of peace, ‘in the New Japan, as so many called it,’ that emerged in the shadow of defeat.”
It is from the ashes of war that Miyako’s story begins, one that she has transformed into great works of art. She explains, “I am not photographing the past. I am taking the present moment, the time, of the now, when these remnants are here, together with me.” By showing us how the past lives in the present tense, Miyako’s work is imbued with the spirit of the eternal. For her series, “Scars”, the artist focuses on the human body and how age, sickness, and injury leave their marks, imbuing the scars, wrinkles, and blemishes with new meaning.
Creator(s): Ishiuchi Miyako (Japanese, born 1947) Title/Date: Yokosuka Story #58, 1976 – 1977 Culture: Japanese Medium: Gelatin silver print Dimensions: Image: 45.5 x 55.8 cm (17 15/16 x 21 15/16 in.) Framed: 54.4 × 65.7 × 4.5 cm (21 7/16 × 25 7/8 × 1 3/4 in.) Accession No. EX.2015.7.76 Copyright: © Ishiuchi Miyako Object Credit: collection of Yokohama Museum of Art Repro Credit: Photo © Yokohama Museum of Art
Her later works look at personal objects as manifestations of individuality and loss, from the lipsticks her mother left behind to the garments worn by female victims in Hiroshima. It is these photographs that are particularly haunting for they become more than relics or artifacts, but take on the spirit of the person they once dressed. Of the dead, Miyako observes, “They are alive. They are here because they survived the war. My photographs are alive.”
“Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows” is on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, now through February 21, 2016.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
