The twentieth century had, among other things, the dubious distinction of being one of the bloodiest, deadliest times in world history. Wars, genocide, mass murders, etc, aided by the best technology available at the time, were responsible for the death of hundreds of millions of people. But who were these people? And what about the survivors? History books are invaluable sources of facts and figures, but all these data, while showing the sheer scale of those tragedies, hardly convey the suffering, hopes and desperation of millions of people caught up in the fight. In other words, the ponderous weight of History all too often ends up hiding the faces of those reluctant protagonists.
Some of those heartbreaking personal stories are now aptly shown in Paule Saviano's book, "From Above," a collection of photo portraits and memories of Japanese and German people who have experienced the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden; and the Bikini Incident. In the first half of this elegant big-sized book the photos are paired with fragments of memories, while in the second part short biographies are followed by the first-person tales of the atrocities those people somehow managed to overcome. All the texts are bilingual, Japanese and English.
Saviano used a Hasselblad camera with an 80mm lens to shoot his models the old-fashioned way, without any digital embellishments, in order to achieve a natural effect. At the same time, many of them were photographed from a low angle, giving them a distinguished air of solemnity. All the images are black and white and most of them only show the subject's face and little else, so that the viewer is not distracted by the things in the background.