Hiroshima, Japan

For those involved in the peace movement around the globe, thoughts this week turn once again to the horrors of Monday, August 6, 1945—when at 08:15 the first nuclear weapon ever deployed on human beings (a bomb named Little Boy) was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay. Three days later, at 11:02 on Wednesday, August 9, Nagasaki was the target of the world’s first plutonium bomb (named Fat Man) dropped by the U.S. B-29 Superfortress Bockscar, flown by the crew of 393rd Squadron.

In 2005, I was one of 24 designers invited to contribute posters for Lest We Forget: Canadian Designers on War, an initiative marking the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (I’ve posted on that previously, here). Michael Surtees attended that show opening at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton—see his flickr photo gallery from the evening here.

Image above: a moving poster designed by the late great Yusaku Kamekura, considered by many to be the father of graphic design in Japan. The poster “depicts a cluster of multicoloured burning butterflies falling from the sky, caught in the flash of an atomic blast, their wings alight with hot red and orange flames burning like streaks of blood from their delicate wings—the beauty and grace of the image serves to undermine the horror and tragedy of war.” Hiroshima Appeals is a poster series that appears annually, initiated by Japan Graphic Designers Association for the Hiroshima International Cultural Foundation.

Takes one back to those halcyon days of yore, no? (from The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies compiled by Lou Brooks… “where tools of the trade that have died or have just about died a slow slow death are cheerfully exhibited.”)

Thanks for the link, Nance!

A few days ago, friend Ronald Shakespear from Buenos Aires sent me the text of a poignant letter written by the late Richard Avedon…

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“In 1970, I showed my father for the first time one of the portraits that I had made of him in the years just before. He was wounded. My sense of what is beautiful was very different from his. I wrote to him to try and explain.

Dear Dad,

I’m putting this in a letter because phone calls have a way of disappearing in the whatever it is. I’m trying to put into words what I feel most deeply, not just about you, but about my work and the years of undefinable father and son between us. I’ve never understood why I’ve saved the best that’s in me for strangers like Stravinsky and not for my own father.

There was a picture of you on the piano that I saw every day when I was growing up. It was by the Bachrach studio and heavily retouched and we all used to call it “Smilin’ Jack Avedon”—it was a family joke, because it was a photograph of a man we never saw, and of a man I never knew. Years later, Bachrach did an advertisement with me—Richard Avedon, Photographer—as a subject. Their photograph of me was the same as the photograph of you. We were up on the same piano, where neither of us had ever lived.

I am trying to do something else. When you pose for a photograph, it’s behind a smile that isn’t yours. You are angry and hungry and alive. What I value in you is that intensity. I want to make portraits as intense as people. I want your intensity to pass into me, go through the camera and become a recognition to a stranger. I love your ambition and your capacity for disappointment, and that’s still as alive in you as it has ever been.

Do you remember you tried to show me how to ride a bicycle, when I was nine years old? You had come up to New Hampshire for the weekend, I think, in the summer when we were there on vacation, and you were wearing your business suit. You were showing me how to ride a bike, and you fell and I saw your face then. I remember the expression on your face when you fell. I had my box Brownie with me, and I took the picture.

I’m not making myself clear. Do you understand?

Love, Dick

This just in from the talented and tireless Chaz Maviyane-Davies…

@Issue

Give the same creative brief to three different designers and you’re likely to get back three different solutions. Take for example the poster competition sponsored by the Canadian Council on Learning and the Canadian Commission of UNESCO to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and mark International Adult Learners’ Week last March. Sixty designers across Canada submitted their portfolios; three were commissioned to design posters around the theme “Learning is a Human Right.”  (Read what the three designers had to say about their individual approaches in the @Issue article here).

Posters by Andrew Lewis, Sergio Serrano, and good friend David Coates. Thanks to Oliver Oike for the link…

Embrace serendipity!

“If you don’t care where you are, then you’re never lost!”

Jane Birkin (in a mini), a Citroën DS… sometimes I miss the 1960s!

Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian politician (1889-1964)

And here’s another wise quotable from the great man…

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.

Image: a Russian stamp honouring Nehru, issued 25 years after his death.

An ancient Cherokee tale…

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life…

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.”

“One is evil— he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.”

“The other is good— he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside you— and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old chief simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Stuttgart, Germany

Heinz Edelmann, the multifaceted graphic designer and illustrator who created the comically hallucinogenic landscape of Pepperland as art director for the 1968 animated Beatles film “Yellow Submarine,” died on Tuesday of this week in Stuttgart, Germany. He was 75…. A highly successful advertising and editorial illustrator in Germany, England and the Netherlands, Mr. Edelmann was known for combining Impressionist and Expressionist sensibilities leavened with wit, humor and irony. He developed a distinct graphic style that influenced many artists in Europe and the United States…

Read the full tribute written by Steven Heller for The New York Times here. See some of Mr. Edelmann’s works on Milton Glaser’s Container List here and here.

Images: the mod-psychedelic look of the 1968 Beatles movie “Yellow Submarine;” posters for West Deutscher Rundfunk (radio) from 1982 and 1983.