Kyotographie: Kawada Kikuji x Iwane Ai review – staggering images of the aftermath of shattering violence

Japan House, London This darkly atmospheric exhibition pairs the revolutionary Hiroshima images of revered photographer Kikuji with Ai’s glittering but deeply melancholy visions of cherry blossom Japan House’s first, free photography exhibition, Kyotographie: Kawada Kikuji x Iwane Ai begins with slow-burning suggestions of fire: a box of Lucky Strike cigarettes, its surface crackling and curled; Coca-Cola bottles sinking into a dark bed of crushed ashes. Kikuji took the photographs with a 4×5 plate camera; here they’re reprinted on washi paper, the textures and density of the blackness making them even more evocative of obliteration. They are vestiges of American culture in the wake of American violence – images found in the wreckage of Hiroshima in the aftermath of atomic destruction. Kikuji, now 93, is a photo geek’s photographer; people have paid up to £25,000 for a copy of Chizu (The Map), the photobook that collects together his tense, ruminative Hiroshima impressions , made when he was in his 20s. A series of seemingly abstract images depicts the stains on the wall – all that remained of bodies in the Genbaku (A-Bomb) Dome. Kikuji was 12 when the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima. His approach to capturing one of the worst scenes of mass destruction in human history was to tell it with a kind of detachment, indirect and impressionistic, fragmented. It’s a story about proximity to trauma and surviving it. His photographs veer away from truth. The reality is impossible to comprehend – for both Kikuji standing there, and us viewing the images. These were revolutionary photographs at the time – and they still feel new in their search to express the inexpressible. Continue reading…