Imagery of Extinction
Hiroshima, photographer unknown, 1945. Courtesy International Center of Photography.
Adam Harrison Levy in Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs:
“Although the images taken by the Physical Damage Division don’t depict the human suffering of the atomic bomb they do provide a vital function. They say: this is what we, mankind, are capable of unleashing upon each other. Like ruins, they refer back into time (this is what we have done, are capable of doing) while simultaneously warning of a future we have not yet encountered (they give substance to our terror of the use of another nuclear weapon).
They are a contribution to what Robert Jay Lifton has called the “imagery of extinction,” images that keep alive in our imagination the consequences of another mass holocaust and, in so doing help, however tenuously, to keep us alive as well.”
Also see the WW2 photos of Nagasaki made by the grandfather of a commenter called Andrew in the article above.
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