Memories of Atomic Bombings as Narrated in Ishiuchi Miyako's Photography Hiroshima series : Gaze and Actions toward ‘Trace’

There are so many approaches putting in the representations of the memory of Japan's Atomic Bombings. Among them are artworks, which present a possibility of growing wider meaning of traces as not only the resulting index of past. This study focuses on one well-known photographer Ishiuchi Miyako, who deals with traces related to the Atomic Bombing in Hiroshima as her lifework. By conducting a content analysis on her works, this study aims to clarify what kind of traces she captures, and how those traces are gazed through the memory telling by means of artistic expression, which may finally influence how we perceive and memorize its traumatic history in the past. To answer these questions, this paper overviews her oeuvre to confirm the themes of her photographs, then center upon her ongoing series Hiroshima with the theory of visual culture and photography. The analysis shows that the traces she captures are not only the clothing of the victims killed by the atomic bombing, but include the specific horizons of time embedded in those personal items which she called ‘kime’, as well as the natural lighting on the light-sensitive film. In contrast to the reflection on the consequences of a specific past, observations of this paper indicate that the traces here bring a more universal value, which associated with the foundation of a place of remembering and memorizing, in where viewers may immerse in the present and being guided beyond the tragedy of Hiroshima