Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako at the Getty

“Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows,” or Darkness, Darkness, Hear My Plea

Although its recovery and growth has been astonishing, Japan after World War II was largely in ruin. Born in 1947, when the gray pall of defeat had still not dispersed, Ishiuchi Miyako grew up to become one of the country’s most notable photographers. Yet, in many ways, the effects of those turbulent early years have never left her. Through February 21 more than 120 of her works are on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum, which also acquired some of her images in 2009 and 2010, and now owns 37 altogether.

Ishiuchi grew up in Yokosuka, where the United States has maintained a military base since 1945. Not surprisingly, as a girl and as a young woman she carried ambivalent feelings about the base, the red light district on the outskirts of it, and something of a resentment over the American presence.

In the latter 1960s, student protests broke out in Tokyo as they did in Paris, Washington, D.C., and other global cities. It was the time of organized anti-war movements, largely against perceived American imperialism.

Presumably Ishiuchi wasn’t unaffected by the social upheaval around her, but it seems she drifted, somewhat rudderless, from 1970, when she left school, to 1975, when she began photographing in earnest. Although she seems in every regard a self-made woman, it also appears that Ishiuchi had a sympathetic family, her father especially, as he even financed her early publications (she had a darkroom in her parents’ home as well).

The Getty exhibition and the catalogue that accompanies it focus on three phases of Ishiuchi’s career, the first being “Yokosuka Story” (1976-77), a subject that wasn’t selected out of love. “I chose what I hated,” the photographer has said.

The curator, Amanda Maddox, explains it thus: “Motivated by grief, trauma, anger and confusion, emotions that might lead others to protest or go to war, Ishiuchi began to tackle her former hometown with her camera.”

I think these descriptions are well represented not only by the subject matter but by the heavily printed, grainy style of her images, which in turn ensure that her subject is dark and bleak. Perhaps because of the forlorn aura and graininess of this series, it actually looks and feels like it was photographed in the 1940s or 1950s, not the latter 1970s. At any rate, Ishiuchi didn’t get the subject out of her system and eventually did a subsequent series called “Yokosuka Again” (1980-90), concentrating on a grittier area near the naval base.

The “Yokosuka” series is not simply melancholy or wistful, which would have nudged it closer to the novels of Kawabata or the films of Naruse, but mostly dark in an existentialist mode. Another series, “Apartment” (1977-78), reveals how cramped–and cramping–Japanese living spaces can be. “Endless Night” (1978-80) casts a bleak and soulless eye upon those looking for sexual recreation.

A series entitled “Scars” consists of close-ups of scars, whether due to injury or surgery, and in some ways reveals the fragility of the human body to go with the fragility of the human soul. “1.9.4.7.” contains 50 photographs of hands and 50 more of feet of 50 different 40-year-old women, all of whom were born in 1947, the same year as Ishiuchi herself.

Another series, “Mothers,” documented items belonging to the photographer’s aged mother–shoes, lipstick, hairbrush, mittens, dressing gowns, etc.–as well as showing us close-ups of different parts of her mother’s time-worn body. All this is poignant in a way, but it’s also, let’s face it, rather depressing.

As is, for example, an essay by Itō Hiromi that’s in the catalogue. The essence of it is something like this: “Once-beautiful women and men crawl along, decrepit and fallen, suffering as they make their way onward, pushing ever forward. They live on.”

It’s sort of the flip side to the glitzy Herb Ritts exhibition of a couple of years back.

It certainly seems that Ishiuchi’s forte, as it were, is for things lost or vanishing, and a focus on wounds or the wounded. And thus the “Hiroshima” project might very well be the exclamation point of her career.

This series is comprised of photographs of clothes that citizens of Hiroshima were wearing when the city was essentially vaporized in 1945. Should we view these as artifacts, as mummifications of their original purpose? Not so. “No, they are alive,” Ishiuchi has remarked. “They are here because they survived the war.”

Despite what might be considered slightly morbid, the works are often compelling, with a kind of dark resonance. Some of the photographs are illuminated from behind, giving them a translucent quality so that they seem to be floating away through time. We may wonder who the people were who inhabited these forlorn shells, presumably all that remains of them.

It’s a sobering presentation on every level.

Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows is on view through February 21 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, in the Getty Center at 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles. Concurrently on display is The Younger Generation: Contemporary Japanese Photography. Hours, Tuesday through Friday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Monday. Free; parking $15 per car. Call (3100 440-7300 or go to getty.edu. ER