Remembering Hiroshima: Photographs as cultural artefacts and memory sites.

Remembering Hiroshima: Photographs as cultural artefacts and memory sites.

Abstract

The photograph is both text and object. It is a mnemonic device, a trigger for the

remembrance and memorialization of events borne out of direct and indirect experience.

But photographs may also be understood as memory sites (Nora 1989), which connect the

past with the present.

In 1947, two years after the atomic bomb exploded over the Japanese city of Hiroshima

killing tens of thousands of civilians, the author’s father served in Hiroshima as part of an

Australian contingency of the British Commonwealth Occupational Forces (B.C.O.F.) sent

to assist in the rebuilding of the city.

The graphic photographs, which depict the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima,

packaged as souvenirs for the occupying troops have shaped Keep’s memories of the

catastrophic event.

Using the field of memory studies as a theoretical framework in which to interrogate Keep’s

family photographs, this paper examines how these particular photographic artifacts have

helped to shape the authors understanding and memories of post-war Hiroshima.

“To perceive the aura of the object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us

in return”1

Introduction

Photographs and home movies have long been associated with memories (see for example

Sontag 1989; Barthes 1981; Hirsch 1996, 2001) and continue to influence our

understanding of life events, as well as the construction of memories in the twentieth

century.

A photograph is both text and object. It is a mnemonic device, a trigger for the

remembrance of events born out of direct and indirect experience. Photographs “enable us,

in the present, not only to see and touch that past but also to try to reanimate it by undoing

the finality of the photographic”2 take. But photographs are also ‘sites of memory’, they are

pictorial shrines, places which illicit the remembrance and memorialization of particular

events.

In 1947, my father served with the Australian contingency of the British Commonwealth

Occupation Forces (B.C.O.F.) in Japan. A carpenter by trade, his job was to assist in the

rebuilding of homes in the Hiroshima Prefecture, a city in ruin and still suffering the effects

of an atomic bomb dropped by the Allied Forces on its population in August 1945. The

photographs brought back from Hiroshima by my father have long been collocated into our

family photo albums, intermingled with images of birthday parties, babies and numerous

weddings.

But these family photographs are more than pictorial devices that record a moment in time,

they are also echoes and/or traces of ‘what once was’ and ‘what can never be’, as they rely

on the gaze of the viewer to breathe life back into them, and in doing so connect the past

with the present. Photographs can shape our understanding and remembrance of events

and places, and with this in mind, this paper aims to interrogate the relationship between

family photographs and memory.

                                                                                                               1  Benjamin, W (1968) ‘On some motifs in Baudelaire’ in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans Harry Zohn, ed Hannah Arendt, New York, p. 188.

2 Hirsch, M (2008) The Generation of Postmemory, Poetics today 29:1, p.183.  

Langford3 states that: “a photographic album is a repository of memory”, but it may also be

perceived as a “lieux de memoire”4 and/or a catalyst for the remembering and imagining of

traumatic events (see Caruth, Hirsch). As noted by Kuhn5, ‘memory work’ may be defined

as:

an active practice of remembering which takes an inquiring attitude towards the past and the activity of its (re)construction through memory. Memory work undercuts assumptions about the transparency or the authenticity of what is remembered, taking it not as ‘truth’ but as evidence of a particular sort: material for interpretation, to be interrogated, mined, for its meanings and its possibilities. Memory work is a conscious and purposeful staging of memory.

Using the field of memory studies to situate my discussion, this paper will explore the ways

in which the photographic image may act as a conduit for personal and collective narratives

pertaining to the memory and remembrance of particular people, places and events. And

how memory work may assist individuals to gain a greater understanding of the role that

photography, and in particular family photographs, may play in shaping our memories of the

past.

Family Photographs and the construction of memory

Photographs play a valuable role within families, and this is further evidenced by the level of

importance often placed upon the capture, collection and preservation of family

photographs. The photo album (or a shoebox or similar) has long been an established

repository for the storing of photographs relating to the past experiences of immediate and

extended members of a family. But the photo album may also be seen as a place, a shrine

of remembrance at which the gaze of the viewer initiates, as Barthes6 suggests a “return of

the dead” and thus making the invisible once more visible.

Family photographs help us to see our lives in relation to the lives of others; they are a

catalyst for the act of remembering both the significant and the banal. But the photographs

in family collections are arguably also powerful signifiers shaping our collective and                                                                                                                3 Langford, M (2008) in ‘Speaking the Album: An Application of the Oral-Photographic Framework’ in Locating Memory: Photographic Acts, Kahn, A. & McAllister, K, E. (Eds). (2008) ‘Locating Memory: Photographic Acts - An Introduction’ in Locating Memory: Photographic Acts, Berghahn Books, New York, p. 223.

4 Nora, P. (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire, Representations 26, Spring, p. 7-25.

5 Kuhn, Annette. 2000. A journey through memory. In Memoryand methodology, edited by S. Radstone. Oxford and NewYork: Berg, p.186. 5 Langford, M (2008) in ‘Speaking the Album: An Application of the Oral-Photographic Framework’ in Locating Memory: Photographic Acts, Kahn, A. & McAllister, K, E. (Eds). (2008) ‘Locating Memory: Photographic Acts - An Introduction’ in Locating Memory: Photographic Acts, Berghahn Books, New York, p. 223.

6 Barthes, R (2000) Camera Lucida, Vintage, U.K., p. 9.

personal memories of the people, places and events that shape and reconfigure our family

histories.

Hirsch7 notes that “because photographs are often read as traces, material connections to

a lost past, and because many photographic images have survived even though their

subjects did not, photography provides a particularly powerful medium of postmemory”.

It’s only now, whilst looking at a photograph belonging to my father, that I suddenly realise

that my Mother had established a hierarchy for our family photographs. Images depicting

the immediate family, photographs taken since the birth of my oldest sibling, were proudly

showcased in a formal photo album whilst images depicting my parents’ lives were

relegated to a tattered shoebox located at the top of the hall cupboard.

In hindsight, I am not sure why my mother had seen fit to conceal my father’s and her past

via the removal of photographs taken before the arrival of their firstborn child. Perhaps it

was a result of being born during the interwar years and not wanting to be reminded of the

traumatic stories and imagery that would have informed their teenage years growing up in

the shadow of World War II.

Whatever her reason for attempting to separate the past and the present, I believe that my

mother’s decision to amputate any reminders of the war years was most likely based on an

acknowledgment of the ability of the photographic images to transmit and construct

memories. In hindsight, I believe that by concealing images of her past, my mother was

attempting to protect her family from the trauma associated with war.

The Negative Epiphany

I was approximately 7 years old when I first discovered the photographs depicting the

bombing of Hiroshima. I had been fossicking in the hall cupboard, which had always

contained curios and long forgotten items no longer of interest to the previous owners.

Amongst the china figurines that once belonged to my grandmother and my sisters’ scarves

decorated with caricatures of ‘The Beatles’, I came across a battered shoebox and lifting

the lid I was pleasantly surprised to find a large collection of black and white photographs.

As I leafed through the images I soon became aware that the yellowing photographic prints

were very much products of a past and place that existed before the time of my birth and

                                                                                                               7 Hirsch, M (1996) Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile, Poetics Today 17:4, p.1.  

therefore did not include myself. I can still recall the unsettling feeling I had that the people

depicted in the photographs were somehow staring back at me, as if a portal had opened

and the thin veil of the past had lifted and allowed a momentary connection with the

present. Here I am reminded of Barthes (1993) experience when he looked upon a

photograph of his mother as a child. As he gazed across the enormous temporal chasm

Barthes was confronted with a representation of his mother that was unfamiliar and outside

of his immediate experience.

Amongst the family photographs were numerous photos of my parents, their parents,

weddings and anonymous smiling faces. I recognized my grandmother, draped in a fox fur

wrap, it’s taxidermied head lolling over one of her shoulders. Other photos depicted my

Mother at the beach with her girlfriends, all wearing smiles so broad that I could almost hear

my Mother’s easy laugh. In stark contrast to my parents’ cherished memories of their

relatively untroubled youth, I came across a series of black and white photographs

documenting the effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Skeletons of steel buildings

lurched like wounded beasts in a landscape reminiscent of an ancient ruin. Some of the

photographs depicted before and after scenarios, creating bizarre juxtapositions where

everyday scenes were transformed, in the blink of an eye, into nightmarish landscapes.

As I gazed at the debris in the photographs, I recognized the remnants of a city once

populated with people just like myself. At that moment I realized that life was not the same

for everybody and that outside the comfort of the family home there were forces that could

disrupt and displace everything that I had previously taken for granted. I felt a mix of

sympathy, guilt and shame; a shadow of doubt had been cast upon humanity as I made the

realization that the tragedy unfolding in the photographs was a result of human actions.

Here I am reminded of Sontag’s use of the term ‘negative epiphany’ to describe her feelings

when she first encountered photographs of the Jewish death camps in Bergen-Belsen and

Dachau. As noted by Sontag8, “when I looked at those photographs, something broke.

Some limit had been reached, and not only that of horror; I felt irrevocably grieved,

wounded”.3 Sontag’s words resonate strongly with me, as I recall the mixed emotions I felt

as a child when I first saw my father’s photographs of Hiroshima. I was both shocked and

amazed by the events depicted, and it was only when I reached adulthood that I gained a

greater understanding of what my father may have witnessed, and then I grieved for him.

                                                                                                               8 Sontag, S (1989) On Photography, Doubleday, New York, p. 19.

And like Kaplan (1993, p.6) who had taken photographs of the Holocaust to school to

show her fellow third graders what had happened in the death camps, I too felt a need to

share my gruesome find with my teacher and fellow grade four classmates.

Hirsch9 talks of a ‘rupture’, a break in the equilibrium, suggesting that photographs

connected to traumatic events, rather than distance us from the trauma, may actually

traumatize viewers, transforming them into surrogate victims as they integrate the trauma

narratives into their own memories. As a child, it had seemed as though my father’s photos

of Hiroshima had transported the past into the future, opening my eyes to a disaster that

appeared to be happening in the present, and I felt compelled to alert as many people as

possible to the pending danger. As a young child, my father’s ‘before and after’

photographs of the bombing of Hiroshima had made one thing perfectly clear to me; that

humans, and in particular men, were capable of unspeakable violence and cruelty.

A photograph, according to Hirsch10, “captures, refers to, an instant in time which, when we

look at the picture, is over, irrecoverable. Yet the photograph testifies to that past instant’s

reality” And perhaps it is the photograph’s ability to illicit a ‘recognition of reality’ in the

moment of viewing that creates a ‘rupture’ between the past and present, therefore imbuing

the photographic moment with a sense of immediacy. And it is this moment of affirmation

for the viewer, that the photograph becomes a memorial and/or memory site, a testimonial

to the existence of the past as a truth.

Family photographs are important devices for the intergenerational exchange of memories,

and as suggested by Altomonte,11 “familial objects, diaries, journals, personal narratives,

and photographs serve as the only material form of witnessing for survivors”. As a child I

was unfamiliar with the word ‘survivor’ and its many implications. And although my father

was not a survivor of the bombing itself, his connection to post-war Hiroshima and the

trauma surrounding the event was integrated into both our family photographs and our

family history.

Postmemory and the Trauma of Forgetting

                                                                                                               9 Hirsch, M (2001) Surviving images: Holocaust Photographs and the work of postmemory in The Yale Journal of Criticism p.1.  10 Hirsch, M (2001) Surviving images: Holocaust Photographs and the work of postmemory in The Yale Journal of Criticism p.15.

11 Altomonte, J (2009) The Postmemory Paradigm: Christian Boltanski's Second-Generation Archive, Ohio  University  and  OhioLINK,  <http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/Altomonte%20Jenna%20A.pdf?ohiou1244047774,  p.19.    

Memory has emerged as “a major theme in contemporary life, a key to personal, social and

cultural identity”.12 Research conducted by Hirsch has provided a strong theoretical

framework for the analysis of intergenerational narratives and family images. Postmemory,

a term developed by Hirsch13, is used to describe:

the relationship of children of survivors of cultural or collective trauma to the

experiences of their parents, experiences that they “remember” only as the narratives

and images with which they grew up, but are so powerful, so monumental, as to

constitute memories in their own right.

In the case of holocaust victims, their stories have been passed onto their children, thus

creating a bank of memories based not on immediate experience, but rather a secondary

experience. Although postmemories may be separated from the memories of the primary

witness by vast temporal gaps, Gibbons14 suggests that a greater distance from the

traumatic event may be advantageous, as “the secondary witness is perhaps better

equipped to develop much-needed new forms of expression”.

According to Taylor15 “bearing witness is the work of memory”, and in the case of traumatic

events, the witness may often feel a deep sense of obligation to keep alive memories

pertaining to family histories. In my case, my father had rarely talked much about his

experiences in Japan, and in later conversations with my siblings I discovered that I had

been the only child with which my father had, on one occasion in my late teens, chosen to

share his memories of the event. I was the one chosen to remember his impressions of the

early reconstruction Hiroshima. As is noted by Gibbon16 “Postmemory carries an obligation

to continue that process of working through or over the event or experience”, and it is this

very sense of responsibility that bore down upon me like a great weight, for I have also

grown up in the shadow of Hiroshima.

My parents, both Australian born, had been teenagers during World War II, and my

childhood was peppered with wartime stories about a pending invasion of Australia’s major

cities. Growing up, I felt that the war was never too far away, and one of my earliest

                                                                                                               12 Michael G. Kenny (1999). A Place for Memory: The Interface between Individual and Collective History. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41, p.420. 13 Hirsch, M (1999) ‘Project Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy’ in J.Crewe & L. Spitzer (Ed). Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, Dartmouth College Press, University Press of New England, U.K, p.8. 14 Gibbons, J. (2007). Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of recollection and remembrance, I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, London, p.75.

15 Taylor, J (1998) Body Horror: Photojournalism, Catastrophe and War, Manchester University Press, p.194. 16 Gibbons, J. (2007). Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of recollection and remembrance, I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, London, p.73.

recalled dreams was of being bayoneted by a Japanese soldier whilst hiding under a pile of

hay in a stable. And as the cold steel pierced my chest, I held onto the scream so as to not

disclose my hiding place. In hindsight, these stories combined with the photos of Hiroshima

had created powerful narratives that had arguably exacerbated my feelings of fear.

Hirsch17 notes that “Postmemory is a powerful form of memory precisely because its

connection to its object source is mediated not through recollection but through

representation.” My father’s stories combined with the photographic evidence have shaped

both my personal memories and my imaginings of the people, places and emotions that

had populated my father’s experiences in Hiroshima. He had once told me about the terrible

injuries the atomic bomb had inflicted upon the population of Hiroshima, and during his

service there, he had seen many sights that had remained with him throughout his life. He

recalled a young girl standing in the street, the skin on her legs hanging loosely, her arms

emblazoned with the Keloid scars, common amongst survivors of the atomic bombing.

I can still recall the photograph of an enormous mushroom cloud, the accompanying text

screaming HIROSHIMA, ATOM BOMB OBLITERATED IT. I later discovered that the

photographs depicting the aftermath of the atomic bomb had been sold to the occupying

troops as souvenirs, but it wasn’t until reaching adulthood that I fully began to realise how

these photographic images had not only shaped my understanding of the bombing of

Hiroshima, they had also provided me with an insight into the life of my father. For these

yellowing Black and white photographs are more than a series of images depicting a

significant historical event, they are also a part of my family history, and my inherited

memories of the past.

Photographs as memory sites

It is not my intention to focus only on the relationship between photography, trauma and

post-memory (see Caruth, Spitzer, Hirsch), for the photographic object itself may also be

considered as a site of memory, or what Nora refers to as “lieux de mémoire”, translated in

English as ‘place of memory’. As stated by Nora,18 “memory takes root in the concrete, in

spaces, gestures, images and objects”

The photographic image may then be understood as more than an object or a piece of

visual communication, it is also a spatial and temporal portal connecting the past with the                                                                                                                17 Hirsch, M (1996) Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile, Poetics Today 17:4, p.9.

18 Nora, P. (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire, Representations 26, Spring, p.7.

present.

According to Nora,19 “modern memory is, above all, archival. It relies entirely on the

materiality of the trace, the immediacy of the recording, the visibility of the image”. Whilst it

may be suggested that memories are contained within the media which carries the

message, I would argue that memories are also brought to the image by the viewer,

creating a dialogue The photographic image is arguably more than a series of visual cues

and signs, it transcends its semiotic interpretation, for we are able to place ourselves within

and outside of the frame. We become both witness and spectator, audience and performer,

we are here and there.

Figure 1: Japanese woman with children in Hiroshima.

Recently I was invited to attend a workshop at the Canberra School of Art. All participants

were asked to bring an object, and in my case I decided it fitting to select a photograph from

the shoebox that once belonged to my parents. It was difficult for me to talk about one of

these photographs in isolation. Each image speaks of the other, and for that reason it was

extremely difficult to select one image to present at the workshop.

Rather than select one of the more dramatic images depicting the destruction of Hiroshima,

as I had always done in the past, this time I felt compelled to select a photograph that had

escaped my attention throughout the years. A description of that image (see figure 1)

follows.

In a narrow urban street stands a Japanese woman, her pose strong and steady, a baby

clasped in her arms. Beside her stands a young girl, her arms resting above her head in a

casual pose as she looks to meet the gaze of the viewer. The street is lined with rustic two                                                                                                                19 Nora, P. (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire, Representations 26, Spring, p.13.  

story buildings, possibly homes. In the background an electricity pole suggests that this

street is located in a city, rather than a rural village. The road is stained with puddles that

create Rorschach like patterns, but I am unsure whether or not these stains are a result of

recent rains or merely a chemical reaction inherent in the commercial photographic

processes of the time.

The photograph now appears jaundiced with age, it’s skin wrinkled, the image gradually

fading as the same chemicals that gave life to the photograph now threaten to destroy it.

A handwritten inscription on the back reads, “This will give you an idea of the morale here”.

The writing belongs to my father, and the message was intended for my mother’s eyes. I

smile to myself, thinking of my father’s diplomacy in selecting and sending one of the least

confronting images to my Mother.

In the past, I had never taken much notice of this particular photograph, as it seemed to get

lost amongst the more confronting images in my father’s collection of photographs depicting

the destruction of Hiroshima. As I examine the small black and white photograph in front of

me, more questions are raised than answered. Is this an image of a mother and her young

family? Who is the author of the image, when and where was it taken? I can’t even be

certain that my father took the photograph. Yet there is something about this particular

photograph that reaches out, as if to touch me. There is both intimacy and distance that

exist within the same frame, a type of co-presence that speaks to me of a familiarity that I

should in some way acknowledge, though I am unable to identify that ‘something’ that is

present, yet seemingly impossible to pinpoint.

Here I am reminded of Barthes20 ‘punctum’, a term he uses to describe the photographic

image’s ability to create an effect that is “certain but unlocatable, it does not find its sign, its

name; it is sharp and yet lands in a vague zone of myself; it is acute yet muffled, it cries out

in silence”. But unlike my childhood dream mentioned earlier, that scream is no longer

muffled, as I finally understand why the photograph of the Japanese woman and her

children resonates so strongly with me.

                                                                                                               20 Barthes, R. (2000) Camera Lucida, Vintage books, U.K., p.51.

 

Figure 2: My mother with my two sisters and myself (left).

Inside the shoebox is another photograph (see Figure 2). It depicts my mother, two of my

sisters and myself. It is the only photograph I have ever seen of myself as a toddler. Just

like in the photograph of the Japanese woman with children, a father is also absent in this

photograph. I assume that my father was the photographer. Both of these images are

missing a father and both of these images were likely to be taken by my father. Did my

father know the Japanese woman?

But these questions are not important to me at this particular point in time, for it is purely the

similarity and the overwhelming sense of a shared experience that connects both of these

photographs of a mother and her children. Whereas the photographs depicting the

destruction of Hiroshima had created a doubt about my safety in the world, these images, in

contrast, speak of hope, compassion and a shared humanity.

At this point in time, it would appear that my memories of Hiroshima and my family history

have once more been reconfigured to express the dynamic and mutable nature of memory,

and the role that family photographs play in shaping our understanding of personal and

collective memory.

Conclusion

The Australian involvement in the occupation of post-war Japan is well documented from a

historical perspective, but it is not the history of images that interests me here, rather it is

the ability of photographs, and in particular family photographs, to evoke remembrance and

illicit practices of memory. I believe that a photograph can not only bridge the past and the

present by creating powerful sites of memory, but it can also trigger a desire in the viewer to

continue to build upon the narratives that shape our personal and collective memories.

My investigation has now posed new questions in regards to the relationship between

memory and photography. Are these images of Japan artefacts, photographs, memorials or

sites of memory? If they are artefacts, then what does this say about a culture or a time

that would buy or sell the evidence of an atrocity as a souvenir? And in particular how might

artists working in digital media express these themes within their creative practice.

For the visual artist, family photos provide an opportunity to explore and interrogate

connections with post-memory and “lieux de mémoire”. My father’s photographs of

Hiroshima have become important tools to assist me in unravelling personal and collective

memories pertaining to my family history and the histories of places, people and events

past.

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