11.02 Nagasaki

Shomei Tomatsu
11.02 Nagasaki

Photographs: Shomei Tomatsu

Text: Tamaki Motoi

168 pages

Pictures: 119

Year: 1968

Comments: Hardcover with acetate dustjacket, 225 x 198 mm. Second edition, 1968 (2years after the first edition which came with a slipcase). Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, vol.I, p. 274-277. Very scarce and collectible copy! Complete with the acetate jacket. In excellent condition!

Nagasaki begins with Tomatsu's images justly renowned close-ups of various artefacts damaged by the explosion - a watch stopped at precisely 11.02, a headless statue and, most powerfull of all, a melted beer bottle. This is one of those rare images that is worth a thousand others, where the fused glass stands in for all the wrecked bodies. The horror that this simple image evokes - more than all Domon's well-meaning pictures of reconstructive operations - demonstrates conclusively that Tomatsu was right to abandon the literal in favour of the allusive and metaphorical as the most appropriate trope for describing the postwar Japanese dilemma.