[Xmca-l] Re: Hiroshima and us

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hi David,

Seeing a black and white photo still captures the emotional content of the horror, I could almost hear the sound of an empty wind, they impact me so.

Also, it's possible to see how painstaking it was for the photographers to take these photos and then stitch them together to make the panorama prints; something that is much easier to do today, even on an iPhone. 

I imagine they did these panoramic prints not because they wanted to show off their technical ability, but rather to make the point of how thorough the devastation was to people not physically present. They are more than historical documents. They are experiential. I know that seems quite obvious now (looking back), but we must imagine what we knew up to that time were the bombings of the great war and most of the second world war in which bombing was isolated to smaller targets, like buildings or bridges. Nothing had been imaginable like this!

As I was looking at these photos on my computer, it even caught the eye of a fellow sitting next to me in the cafe, a stranger. This is proof (to me anyway) of how powerful these photos still are.

Thank you for sharing the link of the photos. 

Kind regards,

Annalisa