About the Artwork

"Hope Lingers in the Afterglow" is a cameraless photographic work by the U.S.-based artist Kei Ito, created through direct sunlight exposure and timed by the rhythm of his breath. Using symbolic paper cutouts on light-sensitive paper, Ito employs the sun as both material and metaphor—transforming its destructive history into a force for memory, revelation, and healing.

At the center of the piece is a paper cutout inspired by the Nihon Hidankyo crane pin and the Nobel Peace Prize medal awarded to Hidankyo earlier this year. Ito’s grandfather, a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor and former chairperson of Hidankyo, wore this emblem as a symbol of peace and resistance. In Ito’s hands, it becomes a luminous gesture of intergenerational memory and enduring hope.

As a third-generation hibakusha and immigrant, Ito’s practice is rooted in the inherited trauma of nuclear violence. His grandfather described the bombing as “hundreds of suns lighting up the sky,” an image that haunts and guides his work. In "Hope Lingers in the Afterglow," sunlight is no longer a representation of the weapon but a witness—its unpredictable palette shaped by clouds, seasons, and chance, mirroring the fragility of memory and the uncertain path of healing.

The work’s exposure is timed by a single breath, turning image-making into ritual. Through this meditative act, Ito connects body, land, and history, creating a living monument—ephemeral, radiant, and quietly resistant. In a world still shadowed by nuclear threat, the piece asks how memory can move beyond trauma toward collective compassion and peace.