When Japanese photographer Miki Hasegawa (b. 1973) found out 350 children across her country die annually due to domestic abuse, but only 90 deaths per year are recognized by the Ministry of Health, Education and Welfare, she decided to draw attention to the overlooked 260 children. For her sorrowful series Internal Notebook, she took portraits of children raised in abusive homes together with detail shots of their physical scars, rearranged their childhood photographs and added pages out of the diaries they kept, to create a series that show all the different faces of the aftermath of abuse. Dealing with the social issues facing Japanese woman and children, Hasegawa tries to visualize what exactly maternal love is in such a traditional country. “It seemed to me that their parents were no different from the rest of us in thinking that we were normal parents,” she states. “We can see that the ones who tormented were not just parents but other adults in society as well.” The wide variety in perspectives mark her work and gives an interesting insight into this well-hidden shame of society.


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Internal Notebook
Miki Hasegawa

Publisher
ceiba editions
2019

228 pages
22.7cm x 18.5xm

Edition of 500