Monday 6 June – Thursday 28 July 2011
After Amnesia: Scenes of Conflict That Have Forgotten Their Past
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Tomoko Yoneda’s work is primarily concerned with tracing history, sometimes real and sometimes imagined, she photographs spaces, interiors and people that do not only visually document the subject but weave a thread which allows us to experience the images beyond what we actually see.
In this particular series of photographs she questions and intrigues us with the images behind our collective memory. They reveal the incredible hidden past behind the everyday and the ordinary.
A beach in Normandy is photographed as it is today – a peaceful scene of sunshine and holidaymaking, packed with families. The present environment however hides the fact that it is the location of one of the most momentous events of the WWII, a major landing place of the Allied attack on D-Day.
With the juxtaposition of the location and the information about its past, these images and others in the exhibition encourage the viewer to contemplate history and the lessons to be learnt from it. It also helps us view the relative importance of momentous events in history in relation to how we live in the real world today.
About the contributors
Tomoko Yoneda
Tomoko Yoneda was born in Akashi, Japan in 1965, but now lives and works in London. She has exhibited internationally, including shows at the Nederlands Foto Institut in Rotterdam and at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Her work is included in various collections: The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. Tomoko Yoneda has also been chosen to exhibit at the International Triennale of Contemporary Art Yokohama 2005 in September. A book of her series ‘Between Visible and Invisible’ is published by Nazraeli Press, USA.