Shomei Tomatsu

Shomei Tomatsu grew up in Nagoya Japan. He was born in 1930 and went to college to study economics. As a student Tomatsu had some of his work published in popular magazines and he published a book with fellow photographers Eikoh Hosoe and Ikko Narahara in 1959. In 1975 Tomatsu published an award winning book called Okinawa and in 1998 Tomatsu moved to Nagasaki. Tomatsu was a war photographer and he wasn't very old during World War II.

This image is of an actress in the movie Shiiku. This image was taken in 1961. While shooting this actress she told Tomatsu the he was the only photographer to ever photograph the scared side of her face. This is one of Tomatsu's most famous pictures and it is the cover of his book The Skin of The Nation



I really like this image cause you cant really tell whats going on. The people look kind of confused and it looks really cold. I love the detail of the smoke or air or something in this picture. I love how the girl is sharply in focus and everything else is kind of blurry.




This picture is of a person that was badly burned by the atomic bombs in Nagasaki. I like this portrait because it doesn't show their face. This is an example of an image that has meaning but isn't directly of their face. Unlike most portraits that are directly of the face this one is taken from a different angle.










This picture is of a bottle distorted by an atomic bomb in Nagasaki. This picture shows the horror of war fare and what it can do to people. If this is what happened to a bottle in an atomic bomb than imagine what happened to the people in Nagasaki.