Hiroshima: After Aftermath

On August 6 1945, the American army dropped ‘little boy’ a nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima, in an attempt to crush the Japanese, forcing their surrender from the war.

Some say that no single event, before or since, has caused so much horror, pain, destruction and death.

The bomb was untried, under tested and the results were harrowing.

Over 140, 000 people were killed due to the blast and thousands more have since died from injuries and diseases as a direct result of ‘little boy’.

Professor of Studio Art at the University of North Carolina, Elin Slavick, came to Newcastle last week to discuss her latest work, Hiroshima: After Aftermath, detailing photographs and pictures charting the bomb and its effects, then and now, in contemporary Japan.

Slavick’s work takes its audience on a visual journey, tackling a deep, complex and distressing subject. As she herself explained “trauma begs representation.”

The talk, held at Northumbria University, was a chance to listen to Slavick’s inspiration, drive and sense of duty in documenting these terrors of the atom bomb, her own personal protest against nuclear war.

She said: “I felt an overwhelming sense of being where I needed to be in Hiroshima, but also felt sorrow, guilt and shame.”

Accompanying the talk was a slide show of photos, drawings and etchings, all made by Slavick, and as she discussed each one, the pride she takes in her work shone through.

Slavick spoke at length of her time spent in Hiroshima, visiting and photographing the damage and transformations which the bomb has brought about: “I made hundreds of exposures while in Hiroshima, digital and analogue, colour and black and white, images of both the survival and the destruction.”

Despite the sombre subject matter, Slavick spoke with great passion and admiration for the people of Hiroshima who never forget their past, but also purposely look to a brighter future.

“With After Aftermath I want to re - shape how people think of nuclear war,” said Slavick, who made a point of documenting Hiroshima now as well as the way it was.

Some of her pictures convey this more uplifting and positive message.

Photographs of happy, free, school children, representing Japan’s future, who aknowledge war but also understand the pain and suffering it brings, are especially powerful.

The children are meaningfully positioned next to reminders of the bomb such as Hiroshima’s Peace Museum.

As an American, Slavick spoke with more than a hint of responsibility for the actions of her compatriots over the years.

In fact, one of her drawings, from Slavick’s previous book, Bomb After Bomb: A Violent Cartography, depicted a map of the world with a pin embedded in every country bombed by the United States.

This, along with the images of Hiroshima, was a stark reminder of the death and destruction which have been inflicted by the self proclaimed ‘leader of the free world.’