Iconic Photos

On December 16, 1989, thousands of people took to the streets of Timisoara in Romania to protest food shortages, harassment of a dissident ethnic-Hungarian priest, Laszlo Tokes, and the dictatorship of Nicholai Ceausescu in general. Many were teenagers and students, and the brutal suppression of these protests marked the beginning of the end for the Ceausescu regime. A few days after the massacre in Timisoara, Ceausescu gave a speech in Bucharest before one hundred thousand people, who shouted down the eccentric tyrant with the cries of “Timisoara!” and “Down with the murderers!” Ceausescu tried to escape the country with $1 billion, but he was captured and executed. It was the last of the popular uprisings against communist rule in eastern Europe that year, and the only one that turned violent.

With Ceausescu gone, Western journalists are invited to see the horrors of the Ceausescu regime. Already on the day Ceausescu was overthrown, locals in Timisoara were unearthing mass graves, believed by townspeople to be holding as many as 4,500 bodies, massacred by the security forces in just three days. The interim Romanian government showed nineteen bodies found in a shallow grave as the victims of the dictatorship. There Robert Maass took the infamous photograph of an unknown man crying over the bodies of a mother and an infant.

Although it was widely assumed otherwise at the time, it later transpired that the crying man and the dead women were not the dead infant’s parents. It was also later revealed that some bodies in the mass grave were not the direct victims of the regime — the mother died of cirrhosis, and the infant of crib death (or sudden infant death syndrome). The locals stage-managed the gruesome event primarily for the international media. Controversy followed, and Timisoara became a symbol (albeit briefly) of media manipulation and sensationalism. It is a photoevent that clearly illustrates the themes we have again and again visited on this site: Can we rely on photographs, and by extension, photographers? Can photographers and newsmen escape from attempts to manipulate them?

It is now believed that the number of dead in Timisoara was probably fewer than 100. Ten years on, the BBC mused whether the key events of the revolution were stage-managed by enemies of democracy (namely the anti-Ceausescu forces within the ruling elite) and whether the Romanian revolution was not a revolution, but rather a coup d’etat. Today, some twenty years after these events, with Romania firmly inside the European Union, we often forget that communist allies controlled politics and economy in Romania until 1996, and that successive Romanian governments blocked attempts to prosecute those responsible for the bloodsheds of 1989.

In 1939, in Konigsberg, East Prussia was born a girl who would grow up to be one of the 20th century’s sexiest women. Grafin Vera von Lehndorff — later Veruschka — was destined to be the world’s first supermodel, but her first appearance on print and film was for Nazi propaganda. The cute little girl was filmed playing with the Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop for propaganda purposes until her family fell out of favor for its involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

A lanky 1.85 m tall in a time when tall models were still unfashionable in Europe, she was discovered by photographer Ugo Mulas and was sent to the U.S. to do full-time modeling. The 1960s were altogether a different age — the models were encouraged to pursue their independent art projects with various photographers, and through her creative and quirky photographs (including one which juxtaposed Veruschka’s slim body with that of a sumo wrestler), Veruschka made a name for herself. Changing her name to a more exotic sounding Russian one, and posing wearing nothing but body paint (her lifelong artistic pursuit that set trends) didn’t hurt either. The 60s were a truly different era; she went with photographer Peter Beard to Kenya, and there painted herself black with shoe polish — which took weeks to remove — to “go native”. We can all imagine what would be the outcry if such an act is repeated today.

In 1966, she was cast as herself for Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up; she had only a few scenes in the movie, but the above scene where she was being photographed by David Hemmings’ character was usually voted as one of the sexiest scenes in the cinematic history. (Interesting photo-related sidenotes: the photographs that made up the plot were taken by none other than Don McCullin; David Hemmings’ character was based on Swinging London’s anointed fashion photographers Terence Donovan and David Bailey, who was originally considered for the role).

The movie was controversial as one of the first British films to feature full frontal female nudity. The MPAA Production Code in the United States banned the movie, but its wide distribution by MGM through a subsidiary in the US, and its grossing $20 million on a $1.8 million budget encouraged the studios, undermined the MPAA Production Codes, and greatly contributed to the Code’s demise. Blow-Up made Veruschka an international star, although her name was misspelt in the credits and she appeared on screen for five minutes. She would go on to earn as much as $10,000 a day. Finally in 1975, her disagreements with Vogue — a magazine that once called Veruschka “one of the wonders of the world” and used her on the cover for the record 11 times — finished her off. Slowly descending into depression and bankruptcy, the women whom Richard Avedon called the most beautiful in the world slid away into a quieter obscurity. But even in the community where age and beauty were daily mantras, Veruschka left behind enormous shoes a younger generation of supermodels had trouble filling.

With nearly all votes counted and Australia is hurling towards its first hung parliament in 70 years. Although hung parliaments in Australia are common at a state level, the last time there was a hung parliament was in September 1940, when the then incumbent Prime Minister Robert Menzies formed a government with the support of the two independent MPs. The next thirteen months were tumultuous, with many Labour party members decidedly against Australia joining the British war effort, and with Menzies himself being voted out for his support for the ‘European War’ (as it was then) and for his failure to win an outright election.

Menzies, however, would lead to Liberal Party to victory in 1949, and embark upon the longest premiership in Australian history. His unbroken eighteen years in office were marked by domestic stability, housing and population booms, gagging social conservatism and Australia’s gradual shift away from the British Empire. By the time he retired in 1966, Menzies not only left behind an essentially small government but also a country with high unemployment, conscription and troops in Vietnam. Menzies’ primary opponent throughout his 18 years in office was the Australian Labour Party, which voted as a bloc. Labour was founded as a party to represent the working classes, and considered its parliamentary representatives as servants of the party as a whole; it required them to comply with official party policy; voted as a bloc.

In 1963, these hierarchical decision making cost the party a close election; At the March ALP conference, Arthur Calwell and Gough Whitlam were photographed outside the Kingston Hotel in Canberra at 2 am in the morning. Although Calwell was the Leader of the Opposition and Whitlam was on the opposition front bench, neither man was a member of the Party’s federal executive, who were inside deciding the party’s manifesto, especially with regards to the U.S. naval bases in Australia. Menzies used the picture (which was taken solely for political manipulation, but ironically not by Menzies’ side) to draw attention to “thirty-six ‘faceless men’ whose qualifications are unknown, who have no electoral responsibility” that form the core of the Labour party. It is a jibe that is still remembered more than 40 years later in Australian politics.

After another electoral defeat in 1967, Whitlam succeeded Arthur Calwell as the party leader. More politically savvy than his predecessor, Whitlam spent years reforming the party, eventually turning the secretive federal executive into a public forum. He also turned Menzies’ soundbite to his own advantage by calling his Liberal opponents, “the 12 witless men”. Whitlam eventually became prime minister in 1972; his tenure was bitter and short and “the Dismissal” which arrived rather controversially was undoubtably a welcome relief for him.

(I couldn’t find the said faceless men photo anywhere. Above is just a simple photo of Arthur Calwell (right) and Gough Whitlam(left)).

Click for the Full Size.

Firstly, some statistics: It has been over 16 months since I started posting photos, some iconic, some banal on this blog. I did over 700 posts so far — and has enough to go on for at least another 150 or so. The blog itself is nearing its 500th day. That will fall in ten days from now, but since I am taking a vacation (again! — isn’t August sweet?) I am preempting it with this rather long post, which is more of a laundry-list of things I want to tell you guys for last 16 months.

1. My friends know I blog but refuse to read it; my readers don’t know me — in fact, I kinda enjoy that sort of limbo. Internet is a dangerous place to put too much of your information out there.

2. There are some serious commenters on this site, and usually the discussion devolved into a partisan fight (and to reductio ad Hitlerum). That is one reason I don’t weigh in on my own posts, but I appreciate every commenters’ devotion to the site. Without the comments — and realization that people actually do read this blog — I would not have reached seventeen posts let alone seven hundred.

3. My reply rate may be horrible — or rather non-existent — but I do read all of the comments. In them, I have been called names by both sides of the political aisle (am I too conservative in my liberalism or too liberal with my conservatism or what?). For a person who is not even American, alternately being accused of spreading American propaganda and of bashing American values have some innate funniness. I am also simultenously supremacist, revisionist, apologist, fascist, communist, capitalist, militarist and peacenik. I seriously should go into schizophrenia therapy sessions.

4. There were surprises too. Two photos I personally would say of local-only importance (here, here) were widely considered ‘iconic’, and were re-posted on digg, tumblr, etc. On the other hand, two photos I would consider almost equal in their intrusions into familial privacy (here, here) had different fortunes here on this blog, as they would in the real life too. Popularity of Brooke Shields photos (545 comments and growing) may be due to the fact that she is a famous actress and that many googlers image-searched her using questionable terms.

5. Thanks to Ms. Shields and a few other posts — and once notably for plagiarism, I have been ‘reported’ to the police (well, at least according to some indignant commenters with their moral hissy-fits) no less than 14 times. Fourteen reports and police hasn’t knocked my front door yet, which causes me to worry a wee bit about our law enforcement.

6. There were people who plagiarized from this blog. I myself copy a lot of information from other sources (books, newspapers, etc.) so I don’t really mind this plagiarism. Since my writing is awful, I am just flattered than someone might copy my materials even. But what is mind-boggling is that they kinda stitched five, six, or ten posts of mine in a single huge post together and reblogged it. Appeal of such a thing escapes me.

7. I have done a few variations on my theme: a painting, a television show, a magazine, a montage, a portfolio-profile, and lastly, a what-if. These were the posts I had the most fun creating.

8. Not all photos are created equal, and some are more iconic than others. But I noticed some categories (fashion, advertisements) remained more unloved than others. War photos were unsurprisingly popular, and so are sports photos too, but the raters tend to affix the ‘iconic’ moniker more on older photos.

9. Many major photo news stories of the last 18 months took place when I was on vacation or too busy to blog about them. (Case-in-point, earlier this week, the most famous of Jazz photographers, Hermann Leonard died when I was away). Luck is a harsh mistress.

10. For the LAST time, I don’t sell any prints here and don’t have permission to authorize republication of these photos. This is a non-profit blog — I will probably get sued to penury by the photographers’ estates if I start charging or commercializing — and I refused a book deal (itself a surprise since my writing is super-bad) a few months ago for the same reasons.

11. The best thing about this blog is the looks I got from friends (at times some girl I am trying to impress) when I say in a understated tone that a few thousand people read it everyday. Maybe some just clicked it and didn’t (can’t) read; maybe some accidentally got here through a dubious search term; maybe one person checks it from thousands of computers everyday; who knows? But I am doing better than some print media, and anyway, the looks are precious.

12. Photography and blogging in general led me towards so many (mis)adventures over the last sixteen months. I missed my train in Brussels because I was too busy obsessing with one photo-exhibition. I led my then-girlfriend on a wild-goose chase across Moscow to find the state photogallery (we never found it, and I seriously doubt it even exists. Muscovites should weigh in). A date turned sour at the Irving Penn show in London. I was arrested for taking photos in a totalitarian-state-that-should-remain-nameless. I randomly ran into an Estonian photographer named Kalju Suur who was once a protege of Henri Cartier-Bresson in Tallinn.

13. To answer a question repeated a few times, I myself do take photos. I just don’t publish them here because they are not only un-iconic but also very bad.

14. Finally, some acknowledgments. I thank all of you for your continued support — and would like to ask you to re-post, re-tweet or re-whateveryoudothesedays your favorite posts from here. Information is worth sharing. I have to thank my parents for their coffee table books, their dinning room gossip and of course my first cameras all of which had been crutches for this blog; Kristen, Emily and Quinn — for I know all of you will be reading this, and for all of you had been extremely understanding; Paul, Josh and Nelson — for all your helpful and sarcastic comments; and lastly, to you, the nameless gift-shop attendant at the Plaza Hotel, New York without whose condescending attitude when asked about a certain Burt Glinn book, all of this would have been quite impossible.

A. S. H.

25th August 2010.

On August 13th 2010, El Nacional newspaper in Venezuela published a photograph of piled corpses at a morgue in Caracas on its frontpage. The New York Times called the photo, “unquestionably gory and unusually anarchic”. Three days later the photo was reprinted by another newspaper, Tal Cual. The Venezuela government denounced the publication as part of campaign against President Hugo Chavez’s Socialist Party ahead of September 26 legislative elections, and the courts ordered all newspapers not to print violent images ‘to protect children’. On August 18th, El Nacional responded by issuing a front page without photos, but with the word “Censored.”

No matter how harsh the censorship is, it is still undeniable that Caracas remains one of the most violent cities in the world. There,  two people are murdered every hour — a homicide rate that has tripled since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998 — and 90 percent of them go unsolved by a system that always manages to find time for cases against Hugo Chavez’s critics. Venezuela as a country does not fare better: if you were a civilian living in Venezuela in 2009, you are nearly four times more likely to get murdered than if you are a civilian living in Iraq! There are 15 civilian deaths  in Iraq and 57 in Venezuela per 100,000 residents. (This data is of course a rough estimate; Chavez government stopped publishing murder stats in 2003.) Although Ciudad Juárez, the center of Mexico’s drug wars, has higher murder rates than Caracas, drug wars have claimed fewer lives in 2009. There was 12 homicides per 100,000 people in Mexico, and 35  homicides per 100,000 people in Colombia.

The government has maintained that high poverty rates in the 1980s and 90s are to blame for today’s criminals, who were street children back them. Freakconomics guys will probably support this hypothesis, but the legacy of Chavez’s Venezuela, with its intense censorship and nationalizations, its ban on investments abroad, its failure to close the wealth gap, its recession-racked and shrinking economy, weak currency, devaluation and an inflation rate that is among the highest in the world will not probably be any better.

In 2008, 270 photos Andre Zucca took during the Nazi Occupation of Paris was shown collectively to the public for the first time. They were deliberately pedestrian: velo-taxis waiting for customers, bicyclists, well-dressed citizens strolling along the boulevards and in the parks, commuters in the Metro, crowed cafes, nightclubs and swimming pools full of young fashionable people. But all these photos challenged the collective memory reinforced by movies and books: the Paris under the Nazi Occupation was a dreary place, black-and-white hell of hunger, of Nazi round-ups, of torture, humiliation and resistance. Zucca, on the other hand, showed a Paris that got on with life and without great hardship.

But that Paris was a myth. Andre Zucca — respected prewar photographer for Paris-Soir and Paris-Match — was working for the German propagandists under the Occupation. Zucca himself was not a Nazi, but he felt no hostility towards the Germans either. But his previous employers shut down, Zucca took a job with the German propaganda magazine Signal, which provided him extremely rare and valuable rolls of Agfacolor film. His assignments were narrowly-defined and difficult but Zucca didn’t stage any of his photos — his casual, carefree, and nonchalant Paris existed:Joseph Goebbels wanted Paris to be “animated and gay” to show off the “new Europe”. Coco Chanel entertained the Nazis; Serge Lifar, Edith Piaf and Herbert von Karajan performed. Theatres, opera houses, nightclubs, cinemas and brothels were kept busy. (Orgy-like parties flourished, right next to the Louvre, and included champagne baths in an era where the most of the world was on food rations).

Yet, in Zucca’s photos, the absent traffic, swastikas, Nazi uniforms and yellow Stars of David — the insignia that Jews were forced to wear — subtlety suggest everything was not well in the Occupied Europe. The film itself — uniquely in color in a time when no one but the Nazis could get color film — tells another tale: the photos were sunny and cheerful because every films required bright sunlight. No matter what inferences you draw from these photos, this much is certain: while they may not lie, photographs never tell the whole story.

Zucca was arrested after the 1944 liberation but never prosecuted. He worked until his death in 1973 under an assumed name as a wedding photographer in a small town of Paris.

(This is an opinion piece. You might want to skip this post if such things offend you).

It is interesting to see that sixty-five years from the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the issue is still controversial. It is not extremely surprising to me at least because I belong to that small minority who believed the surrender of Japan would have arrived even without the use of the atom bombs. Holding this view point as I do, I had a few debates back in college, beyond college, and in workforce. And writing this post flared up the debate again … this time with my girlfriend. She wrote this beautiful piece below to help ‘elucidate’ a few points. I guess it elucidates me not to date history majors (:P love you). Anyhow, two of us went over the piece, abridged it, and I suggested we put a few photo-related themes in. And here it is:

These days, we often forget that the atomic bombs were nearly used on Japan during the Second World War. With the anniversary of the Soviet declaration of war on Imperial Japan (or as they call it in Orwellian jargon of Socialist Democratic Republic of Japan, “Fraternal Help for Pacification”) looming, it is hard to remember another more obscure non-event that would have also happened sixty-five years ago today, had it not been for President Truman’s decision two weeks prior. The bible-quoting haberdasher from Missouri wrote in his diary on July 25th 1945 that with an atomic bomb, military objectives and soldiers and sailors will be targets indiscrimately along with women and children. He overruled the Department of War which was advocating its use, by writing: “It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler’s crowd or Stalin’s did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, and it should not be made useful.”

X-Day, November 1st 1945

The Battle of Okinawa and its devastating aftermath prompted the United States to look for alternatives to subdue mainland Japan. But with Truman vehemently against the atomic bomb and the Soviet invasion of Japan imminent, the United States had no choice but to go forward with the plans for Operation Olympic. In the ensuing decades, much had been made of heroism on the beaches of Miyazake, from Carl Mydans’ photos of X-Day landings to Clint Eastwood’s box-office hit Our Boys of Kyushu, but it was tragic and demoralizing that Japan’s strategic geography, its awaiting guerillas and kamikaze troops meant the Allies casulties were high. Despite these setbacks, the war in the Pacific was over in eighteen months. With the Soviets invading from the north, and the Americans blockading the ports, the Japanese morale was soon cracking. That winter, Emperor Hirohito sat in pallor as his youngest brother denounced him in the privy council. But the martial law imposed to quell riots in Tokyo and Yokohama was the signal to the wider world that Japan would fight to the bitter end. That end arrived on 24th January 1947, with Emperor Hirohito signing the instrument of surrender inside the war-ravished Imperial Palace in front of General MacArthur and Marshal Vasilevsky.

MacArthur, Hirohito and Vasilevsky after Japanese surrender

The next day, the flag used by Commodore Perry when he entered Tokyo Bay in 1853, was flown atop the Imperial Palace. Hidden behind that iconic W. Eugene Smith photo of flag rising — which now graces the National Pacific War Memorial in Chesapeake, Virginia — were deeper discomforts that there might be an ‘influence gap’ between the U.S. and the Soviets. With the war for mainland Japan consuming most of American manpower, Truman failed to prevent Turkey, Iran, Greece, Italy and Korea from falling into the communist camp. Churchill bemoaned this failure in his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Westminster College, London. Encroaching Soviet sphere withered away America’s last remaining shreds of isolationism, but like Wilson before him, Truman was too occupied by a single issue to fully grasp America’s place on the world’s stage. In his magisterial book “Colossus: the Price of America’s Empire”, Niall Ferguson wrote, “Truman’s moral decision not to use the Atom Bomb — which rehabilitated his posthumous reputation — was revealed only after his presidency, the end of which was prematurely facilitated by hesitance and spinelessness he displayed towards the blockaded citizens of West Berlin.” That November, Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York — an isolationist who reverted his stance to vehemently urge America to join Britain in her courageous but eventually doomed Berlin Airlift — had all the good reasons to be smiling manaically from ear to ear when he held up a newspaper predicting his victory four hours before the polled closed.

In 1950, Japan was divided into North and South Japans with Tokyo itself jointly administered between the Soviet Union, China and the United States. In 1955, the Chiyoda Wall dissecting the Imperial Palace went up; in the years that followed, its importance was underlined in two famous presidential speeches made in front of it: Adlai Stevenson’s “Today we are all Japanese,” and Ronald Reagen’s “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall”, but back in 1955, so palpable were the fears that the Soviet Union would drive 20 miles down the 36th parallel delimitation line to invade Tokyo that the wall came as a relief.

Interestingly enough, when Hiroshima was atom-bombed, the Tokyo government radio told the people that a “new type of bomb” had been used. The real horrors in Hiroshima were unknown to the wider populace; since the city was utterly destroyed and communications were hard, even the imperial government was not totally of what happened there. Two days would pass before the government met to discuss the new developments. In the wider world, the situation was quickly changing too; the Soviet Union’s declaration on war on Japan threw a wrench into both American and Japanese strategies.

On the American side, the decisions to use two nuclear bombs — to show than American has more than enough supply of such weapons — had been agreed upon since April 1945.  Only the potential targets were debated upon, so that the U.S. could ban conventional attacks on those cities — in part so it would be easier to measure the destruction from the atomic bomb. The top choice was the emperor’s place in Kyoto, but the decision was vetoed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who spent his honeymoon there and enjoyed the city. (Another thing Stimson considered was that if the emperor were to perish, it would have hardened the Japanese resolve and precluded a surrender.) Top targets became Hiroshima and Kokura. However, August 9th 1945 was a particularly cloudy day in Kokura. The bombing carrying the bomb gave up on Kokura and went on to its secondary target,  Nagasaki.

The Japanese Supreme Council received the news that Nagasaki had been destroyed while they were just debating the terms of surrender. Now,  surrender was not only inevitable, but also the only route for survival. On August 15th,the Emperor’s surrender speech was broadcast over the radio — this was the first time an Emperor of Japan had deigned to speak through a radio.

On the day after the Nagaski Bombing,a military photographer  Yosuke Yamahata took over a hundred photographs of the devastated city. His photographs, taken in an interval of twelve hours in the  afternoon of August 10th, were the most extensive record of  the atomic bombings. In between Japan’s surrender and arrival of the American Occupation Forces, these photos were widely circulated; for instance, the 21 August issue of Mainichi Shinbun printed them. The Western audience would, however, have to wait further seven years before the censorship was lifted and they appeared in the 29 September 1952 issue of Life, together with Yoshito Matsushige’s photos of Hiroshima.  The same year they also appeared in the book form.

Fifteen years ago today died one of the most intriguing characters of 20th century music — Jerome John Garcia, who as Jerry Garcia, led the band the Grateful Dead for exactly three decades. Like the title of his band, Jerry Garcia was no stranger to death. Both his parents perished gruesomely: his dad by drowning, and his mom by driving off a cliff. An accident when he was four took two-thirds of a finger (it being right middle finger, it didn’t prevent Garcia from becoming an accomplished guitarist). At the age of 19, he survived a car accident that claimed his best friend. His recovery from diabetic coma was equally miraculous. But on August 9th, 1995, the 1960s counterculture icon finally lost his lifelong fight with diabetes.

Maybe it was just a reflection of their times, maybe it was something their eclectic music style represented, but in their day, the Grateful Dead acquired a phenomenal following. These so-called Deadheads — who even invented their own language — were the music industry’s first (and only) cult. The dedicated fan base which was started in San Francisco and which soon followed the band from concert to concert presented an atmosphere any corporate executive would kill for: it gave the band the bargaining power with the best venues/clubs which were enticed by the potential of sold-out tickets. And the business savvy band knew this and used their broad musical base to their advantage: by creating a rotation of songs that repeated only every 4 or 5 shows, they managed to keep Deadheads on their toes. By the time Jerry Garcia died, the Grateful Dead — for all the counterculture it represented — was already a prominent and profitable enterprise in California.

As for Jerry Garcia, his name-recognition was so indelible that 15 years after his death, his namesake ice cream, Cherry Garcia, remains the best-selling flavor for the Ben & Jerry’s brand.

Above, Garcia backstage at Woodstock, 1969. The photo was taken by the legendary photographer of American music scene, Jim Marshall. Marshall says Garcia just happened to be coincidentally sitting near a Dead End sign.

Elliot Erwitt was the only American photographer covering de Gaulle’s state visit to Russia in July 1966. “I was there at the French Embassy with all the other dozens of photographers taking the usual handshaking pictures and when it was all over I went back to my hotel and took my shoes off and suddenly thought I should not have left. So I put my shoes on again and went back to the Embassy. There were only a few people still there, the event was over, so I just walked in and opened a few doors and then opened one door and there was the entire Soviet government sitting down with de Gaulle and chatting. Nobody looked up so I just walked in with my camera and started taking pictures. They didn’t question my presence because I acted natural. Noboday said anything and after a while I got up and left. It is very important to know when to leave. No one took any notice. I went back to my hotel and called Paris Match, who could hardly believe it. They broke their cover waiting for my pictures.” Erwitt’s photo of de Gaulle, Brezhnev, Kosygin (among others) in the most casual of settings indeed made the cover of Paris Match and was run worldwide.

The year 1966 was an extraordinarily busy year for Charles de Gaulle. Re-elected the previous year, Charles de Gaulle set out to create a strong France acting as a balancing force in the dangerous rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. He moved away from the American sphere of influence into more neutral waters by withdrawing the French commitments from NATO and demanding that all foreign bases be removed from French soil. In July, De Gaulle made an 11-day trip to Russia, which ended with a joint call for an end to foreign intervention in Vietnam, a proclamation de Gaulle would echo in a famous speech in Phnom Penh in September.

Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin reciprocated the visit with a grand 9-day visit to France. De Gaulle capped the year of diplomatic frenzy with an emotional, yet controversial state visit to Poland. The first non-Communist European leader to visit Poland since the Second World War, de Gaulle was enthusiastically received. There were hails of Duzy Karolek (Long Charlie) from the youth who wore copies of the képi military cap he wore during the war. (To this day the cap is known in Poland as Degolówka). But de Gaulle angered the West Germans by visiting the once-German town of Hindenburg, which had become Zabrze, and said it was la ville la plus polonaise de la Pologne (the most Polish town in Poland).

Yesterday’s post on the Atom bombing of Hiroshima seems to have implied that Mr. Yoshito Matsushige — 32 year old cameraman for the Chugoku Newspaper – is the only person who photographed Hiroshima that day. Although Mr. Matsushige was the only one who documented the carnage around the epicenter, two other photographers, Seizo Yamada and Toshio Fukada photographed the mushroom cloud emanating from Hiroshima from safe(r) distances. Mr. Yamada took the above ground level photo from approximately a little over four miles northeast of Hiroshima, and Mr. Fukada’s four photos were taken from approximately the same distance as Mr. Matsushige’s about 20 minutes after the blast, and 20 minutes before Mr. Matsushige. Another photographer, Mitsugi Kishida travelled to the citycenter next morning to photograph the devastation. We are sorry for the errors.

Here is Mr. Matsushige’s account:

I had finished breakfast and was getting ready to go to the newspaper when it happened. There was a flash from the indoor wires as if lightening had struck. I didn’t hear any sound, how shall I say, the world around me turned bright white. And I was momentarily blinded as if a magnesium light had lit up in front of my eyes. Immediately after that, the blast came. I was bare from the waist up, and the blast was so intense, it felt like hundreds of needles were stabling me all at once. The blast grew large holes in the walls of the first and second floor. I could barely see the room because of all the dirt. I pulled my camera and the clothes issued by the military headquarters out from under the mound of the debris, and I got dressed. I thought I would go to either either the newspaper or to the headquarters.

That was about 40 minutes after the blast. Near the Miyuki Bridge, there was a police box. Most of the victims who had gathered there were junior high school girls from the Hiroshima Girls Business School and the Hiroshima Junior High School No.1. they had been mobilized to evacuate buildings and they were outside when the bomb fell. Having been directly exposed to the heat rays, they were covered with blisters, the size of balls, on their backs, their faces, their shoulders and their arms. The blisters were starting to burst open and their skin hung down like rugs. Some of the children even have burns on the soles of their feet. They’d lost their shoes and run barefoot through the burning fire. When I saw this, I thought I would take a picture and I picked up my camera. But I couldn’t push the shutter because the sight was so pathetic. Even though I too was a victim of the same bomb, I only had minor injuries from glass fragments, whereas these people were dying. It was such a cruel sight that I couldn’t bring myself to press the shutter.

Perhaps I hesitated there for about 20 minutes, but I finally summoned up the courage to take one picture. Then, I moved 4 or 5 meters forward to take the second picture. Even today, I clearly remember how the view finder was clouded over with my tears. I felt that everyone was looking at me and thinking angrily, “He’s taking our picture and will bring us no help at all.” Still, I had to press the shutter, so I harden my heart and finally I took the second shot. Those people must have thought me duly cold-hearted. Then, I saw a burnt streetcar which had just turned the corner at Kamiya-cho. There were passengers still in the car. I put my foot onto the steps of the car and I looked inside. There were perhaps 15 or 16 people in front of the car. They laid dead one on top of another. Kamiya-cho was very close to the hypocenter, about 200 meters away. The passengers had stripped them of all their clothes. They say that when you are terrified, you tremble and your hair stands on end. And I felt just this tremble when I saw this scene. I stepped down to take a picture and I put my hand on my camera. But I felt so sorry for these dead and naked people whose photo would be left to posterity that I couldn’t take the shot. Also, in those days we weren’t allowed to publish the photographs of corpses in the newspapers. After that, I walked around, I walked through the section of town which had been hit hardest. I walked for close to three hours. But I couldn’t take even one picture of that central area. There were other cameramen in the army shipping group and also at the newspaper as well. But the fact that not a single one of them was able to take pictures seems to indicate just how brutal the bombing actually was. I don’t pride myself on it, but it’s a small consolation that I was able to take at least five pictures. During the war, air-raids took place practically every night. And after the war began, there were many foods shortages. Those of us who experienced all these hardships, we hope that such suffering will never be experienced again by our children and our grandchildren. Not only our children and grandchildren, but all future generations should not have to go through this tragedy. That is why I want young people to listen to our testimonies and to choose the right path, the path which leads to peace.

This was what Matsushige saw through his window

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima. Whether you agree with the decision or not, the facts were there: Hiroshima was an important army and navy base. Of about 350,000 people living there on that fateful day, the majority were women and children, since most adult men were fighting at the front.

Nuclear blast and wind destroyed buildings within its 1.5-mile radius. Yoshito Matsushige was barely out of this radius at a little over 1.6-miles from the ground zero. Heading out to the citycentre, Matsushige took the only photographs taken of Hiroshima on that calamitous day. Matsushige himself was not seriously injured by the blast, but the scenes of carnage and dying people prevented him from taking further pictures. (He had 24 possible exposures, in the 10 hours he spent wandering the devastated city, but only seven came out right).

The importance of scenes that Mr. Matsushige documented were not immediately realized in the outside world. Another bomb would follow a few days later, and the war in Far East was finally over. The tone of the Western Press, from the New York Times to Life, was almost triumphal. They would not receive the photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki under months later, and even then, only the heavily censored ones. In addition, the radiation sickness was dismissed as a Japanese effort to undermine American morale, and the stories to that effect were frequently killed. This type of censorship was so prevalent that when MGM had a scene casting doubts on whether an atomic weapon should have been used, the White House called the studio to change the script.

In Japan, the censorship was more draconian. It was not just buildings that were annihilated in Hiroshima; an entire collective memory too was erased. For many years the sole images of the bombings in Japan were sketches and paintings by survivors. General Douglas MacArthur had declared southern Japan off-limits from the foreign press. Wilfred Burchett — who secretively sneaked on a train — had his camera stolen, photos confiscated and was expelled and banned from Japan. Live footage taken by Akira Iwasaki was seized and taken to the United States, and was not returned until 1968. For Matsushige himself, his films were so toxic that he was unable to develop them for twenty days, and even then had to do so at night and in the open, rinsing it in a stream. When he tried to publish them, they were confiscated. Under the blanket rule that “nothing shall be printed which might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility,” graphic photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not printed until the U.S. occupation ended in Japan in April 1952. The magazine Asahi Gurafu opened the floodgates by publishing them in August 1952.

From top to bottom: first two photos showed people who escaped serious injury applying cooking oil to their burns near Miyuki bridge; in the third photo, a policeman, his head bandaged, issues certificates to civilians. The next photo shows shows the shadow of a person who was disintegrated at the moment of the blast. (These steps were cut out and now inside the Hiroshima Peace Park museum.) The last photo shows the damage to Matsushige family’s barbershop.