Lunch Box

Artist Tsuchida, HIromi (Japanese, born 1939)

Date1979, published 1980

Mediumgelatin silver print

Dimensionssheet: 60.6 × 50.3 cm (23 7/8 × 19 13/16 in.)

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineGiven in honor of Stephen B. Jareckie, Curator of Photography from 1962 through 1994, and Gretchen Kinsman Fillmore Jareckie from Martha Tepper Takayama and Atsuyoshi Takayama

Terms

Object number1995.69

Label TextTsuchida stated that “the event at Hiroshima did not end in 1945, but began a new historical era leading toward the twenty-first century.” A six-year-old child at the time of the bombing, he experienced the sweeping consequences of the explosion’s devastation throughout his adolescence, ultimately making the aftermath of Hiroshima a principal theme in his art. The lunch box shown in this photograph currently resides in the Hiroshima Peace Museum collection. Mangled and charred from the heat of the atomic blast, the modest meal belonged to fifteen-year-old Reiko Watanabe. Like Watanabe’s lunch box, the relics photographed by Tsuchida for his Hiroshima Collection are coupled with a short narrative about each item. The emotional power of the images contrasts with the objective detachment found in Tsuchida’s descriptions.ProvenanceTepper Takayama Fine Arts, Boston, MA

On View

Not on view