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

Shomei Tomatsu

1959, printed 1990 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

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.

Artist

Shomei Tomatsu

Date

1959, printed 1990

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1991