Photo/Illutration “Watch” is part of Hiromi Tsuchida’s “Hiroshima Collection.” (Provided by Hiromi Tsuchida)

Photos of everyday artifacts that survived the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of Hiroshima are on display at the Carnegie International exhibition being held in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania until April 2.

They are from the “Hiroshima Collection” by Japanese photographer Hiromi Tsuchida.

Carnegie International opened in 1896 as the first international art exhibition in North America.

It is the second longest-running international art exhibition, coming next to the Venice Biennale.

Curators for the Carnegie International exhibition said that around 150 artists, groups or organizations are showing their works under the theme of “Is it morning for you yet?”

Twenty-eight photos by Tsuchida, 83, are mainly on show at the Hall of Sculpture at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Tsuchida began delving deeply into the subject of the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath in 1976.

“Hiroshima Collection” consists of a batch of photos Tsuchida took of items owned by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in 1982, 1995 and 2018.

They include a pocket watch, a dress, a lunchbox and a school uniform that miraculously survived the devastation.

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A photo of a lunchbox from Hiromi Tsuchida’s “Hiroshima Collection” (Provided by Hiromi Tsuchida)

Tsuchida visited Pittsburgh in September to coincide with the start of the exhibition.

“It is very courageous that the Hiroshima Collection is being shown at the main space of America’s prestigious international art exhibition,” Tsuchida said. “I was worried that it might attract a backlash from people there, but they accepted historical facts and sympathized with the tragedy.”

He had good reason to worry.

In 1995, a half-century after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., planned to exhibit items associated with the bombings.

However, it was called off after an organization of veterans and others demanded it be withdrawn.

The museum is known for exhibiting the restored B-29 bomber named Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Referring to his “Hiroshima Collection,” Tsuchida said: “I concentrated on photographing matter-of-factly how daily lives were destroyed, rather than consciously showing what damage was done. I wanted to show (the damage) as a tragedy that could occur now. I believe that people who saw my photos thought about the possibility that their daily lives could be destroyed, too.”

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A photo of a dress that survived the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima (Provided by Hiromi Tsuchida)

Sohrab Mohebbi, the curator of Carnegie International, said in a written interview with The Asahi Shimbun: “I believe that people relate to these works as residues of human history that remind us of an event that shows the possibility of total destruction through ill-use of scientific progress.”

Mohebbi added that everyone can relate to Tsuchida’s images of everyday objects.

“I do believe that people from any place are touched by these photographs,” he said.

Mohebbi, noting concerns about Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine, said, “I believe that the encounter with these images will hopefully remind us that we should commit, as co-habitants of this planet, that this (the use of nuclear weapons) should never happen again.”

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Hiromi Tsuchida was born in Fukui Prefecture in 1939. He became an independent photographer in 1971. His representative works include “Hiroshima Trilogy,” which comprises the “Hiroshima Collection” and other works, and “Zokushin,” which depicts scenes of Japan in its postwar period of high economic growth.

His work titled “Fukushima,” depicting areas affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, is also one of his representative works. He received the prestigious Domon Ken Award in 2008. He lives in Tokyo.

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