Shomei Tomatsu / Nagasaki 11: 02

Photo by Shomei Tomatsu

Shomei Tomatsu

NAGASAKI 11: 02

“Time has passed in the outside world since it stopped for Nagasaki at two minutes past eleven on August the ninth, sixteen years ago but every victim who has died since acts as a link to join that moment with the present. During the last sixteen years, large numbers of people have died in Nagasaki quietly every year. What I saw in Nagasaki was not merely the scars of war, it was a place where the post-war period had never ended. I thought that the term ruins only referred to the devastated forms of cities, but Nagasaki taught me that it could also be applied to human beings.”