In Rome, Ken Domon, Japan's master of realism, gets first overseas exhibition

People visit the exhibition of Japanese photographer Domon Ken (190990) at the Ara Pacis Museum (Museo dell’Ara Pacis) in Rome. The show runs through Sept 18, to mark 150th years of friendship between Japan and Italy. [Photo by Filippo Monteforte / AFP]

Hiroshima turning point

"We were always afraid of making a mistake, knowing it could lead to a wallop on the back or a clout round the head."

Another former student, Ushio Kido, described his former master as "a very sensitive person."

"He loved human beings, especially children," Kido says.

Children feature in many of the most striking images on display, from the small boy peeing in the street from a 1952-54 series to the laughing toddler who features alongside his equally joyous but disfigured father in "the Otani family" from his Hiroshima collection.

A small selection of the 7,800 images Domon took in and around Hiroshima in the Fall of 1957 form the heart of the collection in Rome and have been symbolically placed in a low-lit room in the centre of the riverside museum.

Twelve years after the first military use of the atomic bomb, the scars were still evident on the city's infrastructure and in the disfigured and reconstructed limbs and faces that Domon was to be severely criticised for recording, often weeping as he did so, according to his own account.

"People said it was too shocking, and he was attacked for capturing the reality of the survivors' situation," says Menegazza.

"But for him it was a moment of change in his life. He recorded in his notebook the exact time at which he arrived in Hiroshima for the first time and for him it was one from which there was no turning back.

"He realised that up until that moment he had chosen to ignore or had been afraid of what Hiroshima meant. And that pushed him deeper into realism."