Wakaji Matsumoto — An Artist in Two Worlds: Los Angeles and Hiroshima, 1917–1944 is an online exhibition and public program about an artist and pioneer in Pictorialism who documented the lives of Japanese immigrant farmers in rural Los Angeles during the early 1900s and created rare images of urban life in Hiroshima prior to the 1945 atomic bombing of the city.
The online exhibition, presented by the Japanese American National Museum, highlights rarely seen early photographs of Los Angeles prior to World War II and of Hiroshima before the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb through the single lens of photographer Wakaji Matsumoto.
"Wakaji Matsumoto's photographs of farms that were operated by Japanese Americans in the Los Angeles area demonstrate the difficult life of Japanese Americans and their resolve and resilience," says Dennis Reed, the curator of the exhibition. "His photographs of Hiroshima are the largest-known photographic archive of the city prior to the atomic bomb. Today, our knowledge of the city's horrific fate lends a pall of melancholy over these tender images. They bear the weight of history."
View the online exhibition here: janm.org/exhibits/wakaji-matsumoto