The Power of Pictures

“Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words.” Arthur Brisbane (1864~1936), a high-profile New York journalist and editor, penned those words 111 years ago in a 1911 newspaper article. That seems to be the origin of the much-used expression that you have heard repeatedly. 

This post is about two specific photos that were made public fifty years ago rather than about the power of pictures in general.

One of those images is now generally titled “Napalm Girl.” It is the photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, taken in 1972 by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut (who was born in Vietnam in 1951).

“The Girl in the Picture” was the title of my 7/10/11 blog post, which includes a reproduction of the photo, so I will not write more about that powerful picture here.*

The second picture, and the main subject of this article, was also made public in 1972. Different names have been used for it; the one I prefer is “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath.”**  

Kamimura Tomoko was born blind and paralyzed with congenital “Minamata disease” in 1956 and was 15 at the time the picture of her and her mother bathing was taken. She died in December 1977 at the age of 21.

“Minamata disease,” a type of mercury poisoning, was the name of the malady suffered by those who were born with various deformities in and around the small city of Minamata in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. Tomoko was just one of nearly 3,000 people who contracted Minamata disease.

American photojournalist W. Eugene Smith took the picture of Tomoko being bathed by her mother in late 1971. Smith (1918~78) was widely known because of the outstanding photos he took during World War II. But many commentators regard “Tomoko” as Smith’s greatest work.

The iconic photograph was first published in the June 2, 1972, edition of Life magazine as the centerpiece of a short Minamata photo essay.

The movie Minamata, which premiered in Berlin in 2020, was released in the U.S. in February of this year. It features Johnny Depp, who does an outstanding job of portraying the not-so-likeable Smith. 

Although there are various historical inaccuracies and other defects in the movie, it pictures well the suffering of so many families in Minamata and the culpability of the Chisso Corporation, the Japanese chemical company which for 34 years polluted the water supply near Minamata.

The climax of the film is Smith’s photographing Tomoko and her mother. And, in actuality, upon its publication in 1972 the photo became world-famous, significantly raising the international profile of Minamata disease and the struggle of the victims for recognition and compensation.

Minamata is about 120 miles due south of Fukuoka, the city to which June and I (and our two children at the time) moved in 1968. Although the tragedy of children born with Minamata disease was known, in part, since the 1950s, I don’t know when we first began to hear about it.

In the summer of 1971, shortly before Smith arrived in Minamata, we came back to the U.S. for a year, so perhaps we didn’t become aware of the dire situation in Minamata until after Smith’s photo essay in Life, including “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath,” was published the following year.

In February 1988, I went to Minamata with a group of Japanese Christians who wanted to learn more about the situation there and to consider how to do more to not only help the victims but also to help stop the polluting practices of companies such as Chisso.

While there are lingering effects of Minamata disease, that sad episode is largely over. But the fight against industrial pollution, in all countries including the U.S., is an ongoing one.

The Trump administration did away with a great many restrictions established by the Environmental Protection Agency. And if (when?) the GOP gains political dominance this year or in 2024, industrial pollution will likely be a problem that will again have to be addressed more actively.

Powerful pictures protesting pollution may become imperative again.

_____

* If you want to read even more about this picture, check out “'Napalm Girl' at 50: The story of the Vietnam War's defining photo,” a CNN article posted last month.

** Although Tomoko’s surname was “Kamimura,” because of the misreading of the first Japanese character of the family name, the photograph has sometimes been erroneously known as Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath.