picturing nagasaki + family albums
Who Is Tessa Morris-Suzuki?
historian of modern japan and north korea
What are her interests?
The past and present of the indigenous people of the Russo-Japanese border area (Hokkaido, Sakhalin, the Kurile Ilsands and the Lower Amur region); grassroots movements and survival politics in Northeast Asia; the Korean War in regional context; border controls and migration in East Asia; national identity and ethnic minorities in Japan; modern Japanese historiography; human rights in Asia; memory and reconciliation in Northeast Asia; empire, art and war (with particular reference to East Asia).
they focus on the faces of particular though for the moment nameless people.
Her thoughts of photography
inspired an effort to imagine who these people were and how they felt.
Professor School of Culture
objectivity
subjectivity
photographer's intention
existential
intimacy
Family Albums-As social Interaction changes, the meaning of family photo also changes
portrait photography are often staged,
people are also refrained from smiling
and moving
viewer's interpretation
however, power of the photograph to convey that sense of individual empathy is not determined by the technology of the camera itself.
Photographs allow people to to travel
over space and time.
profound appeal of such pictures, of course, lay in the fact that they capture the fleeting substance of life itself: they are 'a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still'
historical data
Allow mobile people to still connect
with their historical ties
controversy
She's fascinated by how in Japan, there is a big divide between the state level of politics with one almost unshakable dominating party and grassroots movements where "all sorts of amazingly interesting things happen, with people doing quite remarkable things in their own little community, which we don't really hear about".
in this belief, it makes photographs seem like a reliable source of information, which ironically makes it the easiest to lie through photographs
relate to time context. Portrait photography used to be the tradition of upper class to show their status
Urbanization has an impact on the relationship of people and their family photo. family album allows them to still be surrounded by historical ties