Japanese photographer Aya Fujioka has created a compelling photographic series titled "Here Goes River" that documents contemporary life in Hiroshima, capturing the everyday moments and spaces that define her hometown while grappling with its profound historical weight. The award-winning project, which began in 2017, presents mundane yet deeply meaningful scenes that reveal how the past continues to shape present-day life in the city that experienced the atomic bombing 80 years ago.
Fujioka initially set out to photograph a version of Hiroshima that wasn't defined by its historical burden, seeking to shake off the weight of history and capture her own personal relationship with the city. However, she found this approach challenging at first, explaining that "someone's idea of Hiroshima was always on my mind." It was only after her mentor encouraged her to "photograph your own relationship with Hiroshima" that she felt liberated from the pressure to recount the city's tragic history, allowing the project to take its true shape.
The series focuses heavily on the six rivers that run through Hiroshima, which Fujioka discovered had profoundly shaped both the city's geography and daily life. "It wasn't until I started this project that I noticed how deeply rivers shape Hiroshima. They're woven into everyday life, and through photographing them, I came to feel more connected to the city," she reflects. Living with the river in sight from her apartment window, she often found herself gazing out at the water, observing how the rivers shift with the tides from the bay and noting their moments of stillness.
Fujioka's observations about the rivers revealed deeper truths about her understanding of her environment. "I had always thought rivers flowed in a single direction, but when the current paused and the surface quietly reflected the sky, I realized how little I truly understood them," she notes. This metaphor extends to her relationship with Hiroshima itself, where surface appearances masked complex underlying currents of history and memory.
Despite her intention to avoid historical references, Fujioka's images inevitably contain symbols and echoes of the city's past. One photograph shows a person descending into the river, which quietly recalls the thousands who rushed to the water after the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, desperately seeking relief from thirst and burned skin. Another image captures schoolgirls striking a popular social media pose, with the Atomic Bomb Dome war memorial visible in the background – a juxtaposition that Fujioka says she didn't even notice when taking the photograph, and the girls probably didn't either.
Even seemingly simple daily activities carry symbolic weight in Hiroshima. Fujioka photographed someone combing their hair, noting that "we grew up hearing stories of women losing a lock of hair each time they combed it" – a reference to the effects of radiation exposure. Prayer is another recurring theme in her work, which she describes as "something you witness everywhere in Hiroshima – an instinctive, almost everyday gesture in this city."
One significant historical moment captured in the series relates to Barack Obama's 2016 visit to Hiroshima, making him the first and only sitting U.S. president to visit the city since the bombing. Fujioka documented the excitement surrounding this historic visit, as police from neighboring prefectures flooded the city. "People were simply excited that the American president was visiting our city. I tried to capture the murmur, the sense of pure excitement in the air," she explains.
As Fujioka continued her photographic exploration of the city's streets and everyday life, she began to recognize how fragments of Hiroshima's memory persist in the urban landscape. "It is a city rebuilt over time, shaped by its citizens after the war. Hiroshima persists, smoldering quietly beneath the surface of daily life. And in those subtle fissures of reality, beyond my own ego, I caught glimpses of a Hiroshima I hadn't seen before," she reflects.
The photographer draws a particularly poignant connection between past and present through her observations of a diorama at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The display captures the moment the atomic bomb exploded, showing a river continuing to flow within the overwhelming flash of light. Fujioka notes that this represents "a view no one could have seen – not even from the plane that dropped the bomb." By the time the bomb detonated 43 seconds after release, the Enola Gay aircraft was already far over the ocean.
This abstract representation of the river during the bombing and the river she watches from her apartment window "may seem infinitely far apart," Fujioka acknowledges. "Still, I want to imagine the everyday lives that once unfolded beneath that blinding white heat." This connection between the unwitnessed moment of destruction and contemporary daily life exemplifies how her series transforms familiar scenes into sites of reflection.
Fujioka maintains her photographic practice as an annual ritual of remembrance and documentation. Every year on August 6th, the anniversary of the bombing, she walks around the city with her camera from very early morning until late evening, continuing to document how Hiroshima lives with its history. Her work resists spectacle, instead offering subtle, poetic meditations on presence and absence that draw out the silences that remain decades after the atomic bombing.
The city of Hiroshima, situated on a river delta, now has a population of approximately 1.17 million people. The sandbank area where the bomb struck has been transformed into Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, representing the city's commitment to peace and remembrance while continuing to evolve as a living, breathing urban center.
Selected works from Fujioka's "Here Goes River" series will be featured at the international art fair Tokyo Gendai, taking place at Pacifico Yokohama, Japan, from September 12-14. The exhibition comes during a particularly significant year as Japan marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing, making Fujioka's intimate perspective on contemporary Hiroshima especially relevant for audiences seeking to understand how historical trauma continues to shape daily life in one of the world's most symbolically important cities.
