Shiseido 3.11 Portrait Project
The 3.11 Portrait Project held an exhibit in the Japanese Canadian Cultural Center (JCCC) gallery for the month of June.
This project was to support the recovery efforts in Japan through the power of photography to celebrate the courage and hopes of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami survivors.
A two large transparent boxes held many origami cranes. As you may know, the Thousand Origami Cranes was popularized through the story of Sadako Sasaki, a Japanese girl who was two years old when she was exposed to radiation from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II.
A collection of traditional family portraits were taken by volunteer photographers in the midst of one of the largest natural disasters in Japan’s history.
The pictures were simply displayed on the gallery walls.
I went to see this a few weeks ago. Great exhibit.
One of the most famous origami designs is the Japanese crane . The crane is auspicious in Japanese. Japan has launched a satellite named tsuru (crane). Legend says that anyone who folds one thousand paper cranes will have their heart’s desire come true. The origami crane (折鶴 orizuru in Japanese) has become a symbol of peace because of this legend, and because of a young Japanese girl named Sadako Sasaki . Sadako was exposed to the radiation of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as an infant, and it took its inevitable toll on her health. She was then, a hibakusha — an atom bomb survivor. By the time she was twelve in 1955 , she was dying of leukemia . Hearing the legend, she decided to fold 1,000 cranes so that she could live. She folded 644 before she died. Her classmates folded the remaining number and she was buried with a wreath of 1,000 cranes. While her effort could not extend her life, it moved her friends to make a granite statue of Sadako in the Hiroshima Peace Park : a young girl standing with her hand outstretched, a paper crane flying from her fingertips. Every year the statue is adorned with thousands of wreaths of a thousand origami cranes. A group of one thousand paper cranes is called senbazuru in Japanese.
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