The Memories of Others: the Irish work of Akihiko Okamura
by Allan LEONARD
12 April 2024
Highlighting the exhibition and book of the Irish work of Japanese photographer Akihiko Okamura, Photo Museum Ireland hosted a curators’ panel discussion and a publisher’s presentation. Several dozen attended two hour-long sessions, surrounded by framed colour photographs from his extensive archive of work.
The curators’ discussion featured Masako Toda (leading photography historian, critic, and curator of Japanese photography), Pauline Vermare (curator and historian, specialist on Japanese and Irish photography), Sean O’Hagan (photography journalist), Kusi Okamura (writer and daughter of Akihiko Okamura), and Marc Lesser (director of Lucky Tiger Productions). Trish Lambe (director of Photo Museum Ireland) chaired the session.
Masako Toda reviewed the professional life of Akihiko Okamura, including how Japanese society was surprised to learn that his work was being published internationally by the likes of Life magazine. It is fair to say that Okamura’s early work was in the photojournalism style — shot on black-and-white film and capturing “decisive moments”. Toda remarked that as a freelance photographer in south Vietnam during the war, “he photographed dead bodies in the same way”, regardless of whether civilian or military rank. She suggested that his previous training as a doctor may have influenced him in this way.
Through questions from the audience, we learn that Okamura admired the work of the legendary war photographer Frank Capa, but was perturbed that Capa wasn’t using colour film (although Capa did so). Okamura decided to shoot colour film and began carrying two cameras with him: a Leica for black-and-white film and a Brownie for colour film. Like Larry Burrows’s work, some of Okamura’s colour images were published in magazines.
Okamura relocated to Ireland after the Vietnam War, and The Memories of Others — a 20-minute film that was available to watch within the exhibition — suggested that Okamura may have been influenced by a connection between President John F. Kennedy’s involvement with Vietnam and a shared Catholicism with Okamura’s mother. In the film, Okamura is described as a socialist who identified with those being oppressed, but also viewing the aftermath of conflict in a humanist way.
Toda said that Okamura’s images of Ireland represent 20 per cent of his archive material of about 50,000 images. Few of these 10,000 images were ever seen until some 300 were shown at a retrospective exhibition in Tokyo in 2014. Subsequently, some were included as part of a compilation of photographers’ work at an exhibition, “Strange and Familiar”, at the Barbican Gallery in London in 2016. It was here that a convergence of interested parties wanted to learn more about this photographer unfamiliar outside of Japan.
Pauline Vermare described how she spoke with photographer and photo historian Martin Parr, along with Trish Lambe. They were introduced to Masako Toda and after several online video calls during the pandemic, work got underway to forge the current exhibition. Vermare grew up in Japan and developed an academic specialism in Northern Ireland photography; so, a perfect fit for the job at hand.
She reminded the audience of Okamura’s early black-and-white images intended for the press, and contrasted this to his colour work of Ireland: “These are still, peaceful, and poetic images” with “so many layers of history”.
For Sean O’Hagan, who grew up in Northern Ireland, some of Okamura’s images brought him back to the beginning of the Troubles conflict; he highlighted the Bombay Street image of burnt-out houses. O’Hagan described Okamura’s images as the “texture of Northern Ireland at that time”, and not as photojournalism but more as film stills: “It confuses me in a brilliant way.” O’Hagan concluded with a quotation from Theodor Adorno, a German philosopher, remarking on a return visit to the home of his youth:
“I’m at home in a mood of helpless sadness… Melancholy irresistibly pulled me into the abyss of childhood and language threw me back there and awakened in me like an echo the unhappiness I felt by forgetting who I know.”
O’Hagan added that this was “the kind of weird feeling” he had when he saw these images by Okaumra: “I felt like I had forgotten all this, and yet here it is in front of me.”
Trish Lambe added that it is appropriate to have this exhibition now, both in terms of looking back at the conflict with a different (non-photojournalistic) lens as well as a new discussion of the future on the island. Here, she made a point about the lack of any strategic archiving of images of the Troubles:
“There are a lot of really great photographers who might have had a commercial practice [but] went to Northern Ireland in their own time and made bodies of work. We need to find a way to digitise lots of work.
“This [exhibition] for us is the start of a plan to do this — with collaborative partners across the island — and make sure we build the archive up. It’s too important.”
Kusi Okamura described her father’s Irish work as “snapshots of others’ lives”, referencing the metaphor of “arrow in flight”. With few memories of her father, she said that when you look at the images, you think of the person who took the photographs — his experience of war and grief. Kusi Okamura framed this in terms of fractured history and fractured lives, and found her father’s approach as that of a poet. Complementing this, Lambe said that she found a quietude in Okamura’s work, in him bearing witness to people’s lives after the event.
Marc Lesser briefly described the collective work in creating a film to tell the story of Akihiko Okamura: “We were literally following in his footsteps.” As Lambe put it, “We were trying to find him.” Vermare said, “There was no human remembrance, no one remembered him. We wanted to show where he was based.”
The next session was a presentation by Jordan Alves, from the photobook publisher Atelier EXB. He described their bookmaking as a mixture approach, wishing to intersect photography with other disciplines, such as science and writing. Alves provided some examples, such as Mars, which took high-resolution satellite images of the red planet and curated a selection for a large black-and-white photobook: “We brought material from the scientific world to a photographic field.”
Alves explained their approach to the photobook of Akihiko Okamura’s Irish work, The Memories of Others:
“The idea was to create a context by giving clues in the beginning (with essays), then dive into the images (with plenty of space that they deserve), and finish with more clues (about where you’ve been). We offset the text material through the use of yellowish paper, warmer at the front and end so as the reader can appreciate the photographs more.”
He described a book cover as the “gateway”, and elaborated that for The Memories of Others they took inspiration from the smaller cover flaps regularly found in Japanese photobooks. Likewise, the short poem on the front cover is repeated on the back cover.
Alves asked a question that he gave his own answer to — what is making a book really about?
“A book is a physical object that will be shared. It is also a vector of something the photographer wants to say… The truth that we put in the books but also the beauty of the message that we are giving the readers. I feel like it’s really part of our mission as publishers to do [this], which you editors should agree on because it’s your name on the cover.”
This answer led to a follow-up question from the audience; what if the photographer in question is no longer alive? How do we know if the legacy is truthful?
“There is truth in the facts but also in the meaning of the book and what the photographer wants. When we work with an archive — which we do quite often and when the photographer is not here anymore — it’s super exciting because you’ve got this discovery moment and you are making a puzzle, when everything is fitting together and you get the big picture.
“It suddenly makes sense. You understand why [Okamura] came to Ireland. Well, you think you understand — you never will [understand]. But you think you understand…
“You get excited and want to put this in a book, but it’s a lot of anxiety and fear, because you want to do this correctly. And this is why you want other people involved.”
Referring to Masako Toda, Trish Lambe, Sean O’Hagan, and others, Pauline Vermare added:
“It was this chorus of voices that was really important, since [Akihiko Okamura] passed away in 1985… You can’t imagine what he would have said, but you can at least respect the images historically and knowing who the man was, right?”
Trish Lame said: “You’re aware that it is fiction. You are inventing, in a way.”
So, the memories of others has a double meaning — of those who literally make tactile, first-hand observations of others and those who must surmise and do their best to honour those who can no longer speak for themselves, through second- and third-hand perspectives.
The Memories of Others exhibition is on display at Photo Museum Ireland from 11 April to 6 July 2024. The film of the same name is available to view at the exhibition. The English-language version of the book of the same name is available at Photo Museum Ireland and from Prestel.