The Love/Hate World of Shomei Tomatsu

Tomatsu's genius in these photos is twinning Cartier-Bresson's famed Decisive Moment with beautiful, if sometimes bizarre, composition to give us his unmistakable take on the momentous things he witnessed in his native land.

There is no way to sugar-coat an atomic bomb attack on cities -- we must live with the fact that we are the only nation to use a-bombs during wartime, and against civilians. And Tomatsu's work documenting the aftermath of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are chilling in their depiction of the human wreckage they created.

Yet, contradictingly -- surreally -- there is beauty here as well. In the unsettling image of a fused bottle turned into a stand-in for a roast suckling pig. Or in two disparate yet united photographs that combine terrible beauty with at least a glimmer of hope.

The first image, made in 1962 as part of a project to make the world more aware of the nuclear threat, shows a man named Senji Yamaguchi, his face all but obscured by deep shadow, but his throat and right ear in stark relief, a rough terrain of keloid scars peculiar to the blast and burn of nuclear weapons. The black and white image is part of a series of powerful photographs depicting the victims of the atomic attack.

Elsewhere in the exhibition, though, there is another image, made in 1998 in color, like much of Tomatsu's later work. It is a simple photograph of a man in a white shirt standing with his back to the camera on the deck of a ferry boat. He is leaning slightly, looking out at the water in a gesture that conveys serenity and gentleness.

There is no uniting information in the caption. One must look at the ruined right ear to find the connection over more than three decades.

Here again is Senji Yamaguchi and here, too, is Tomatsu talking back to us.

Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation, Corcoran Gallery of Art, through August 29th. 500 17th St. NW (Faragut North) Open every day except Tuesday, 10am-5pm and until 9pm on Thursday. Admission: $6.75 for adults; $4.75 for seniors; $3 for students with ID. Information: 202-639-1700, www.corcoran.org

DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS, FLASH WORKSHOP WITH FRANK VAN RIPER

Photography columnist and author Frank Van Riper will once again teach his popular 6-week evening workshop in documentary photography and photographic printing at Glen Echo Park's PhotoWorks studio this fall and winter. The Thursday evening classes will begin September 22nd and February 15th respectively and run from 7pm to 10:30pm each week.