Overview participating exhibitions
War Machines
2009
War Machines
Yosuke Yamahata
NAGASAKI (Japan 1945)
In 1945 there was no photographer who arrived more quickly in Nagasaki to survey the damage from the atomic bomb than Yosuke Yamahata. He was already in the city the day after the bombardment, taking hundreds of photographs within twelve hours – the most extensive photographic document of the immediate aftermath. Within two weeks his photos appeared in the Japanese magazine Mainichi Shibun. Once the Americans had Japan under their control they imposed censorship that prevented the distribution of Yamahata’s photographs. It was only after the restrictions were lifted in 1952 that they would appear in Life.
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NAGASAKI (Japan 1945)
In 1945 there was no photographer who arrived more quickly in Nagasaki to survey the damage from the atomic bomb than Yosuke Yamahata. He was already in the city the day after the bombardment, taking hundreds of photographs within twelve hours – the most extensive photographic document of the immediate aftermath. Within two weeks his photos appeared in the Japanese magazine Mainichi Shibun. Once the Americans had Japan under their control they imposed censorship that prevented the distribution of Yamahata’s photographs. It was only after the restrictions were lifted in 1952 that they would appear in Life.
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NAGASAKI (Japan 1945)
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NAGASAKI (Japan 1945)
Biography
Nagasaki (1945)
In 1945 there was no photographer who arrived more quickly in Nagasaki to survey the damage from the atomic bomb than Yosuke Yamahata. He was already in the city the day after the bombardment, taking hundreds of photographs within twelve hours – the most extensive photographic document of the immediate aftermath. Within two weeks his photos appeared in the Japanese magazine Mainichi Shibun. Once the Americans had Japan under their control they imposed censorship that prevented the distribution of Yamahata’s photographs. It was only after the restrictions were lifted in 1952 that they would appear in Life.
Yosuke Yamahata (Singapore, 1917 – Japan, 1966) studied at Hosei University in Tokyo, but left that institution before graduating in order to work in his father's photo company. During the early years of the war Yamahata was active as a military photographer in China and other places. In 1942 he returned to Japan. By 1965 Yamahata was seriously ill. The diagnosis was terminal cancer, caused by the radiation to which he had been exposed in Nagasaki.