Name: Leo Rubinfien
Residence: New York City
Occupation: Photographer and essayist
Why I chose this picture: It’s the oldest photograph [in his exhibit and book “Wounded Cities”], and the one that launched the whole project. You never know whether any particular picture is going to work, but sometimes you get very excited; you feel, “Maybe this is something!” I remember feeling that about this girl.
It had become very popular by that year for Japanese girls, whose natural hair color, of course, is black, to make their hair blonde, or red, or orange, or some more exotic color. Although this was something you felt you should be used to, it’s terrifically strange in her case, maybe because her hair is so long; maybe because it’s also curled. The oddity of her hair makes her a little bit shocking. You don’t know if it’s a shock she’s experienced, or whether it’s a shock that you’re experiencing looking at her.
So much of the project is built around my effort to find out whether I can really know anything about all these people I’m looking at. Part of what was so exciting about finding this picture back in 2002 was that it told you so much about her, and yet it told you nothing at all.
It was a period of intense anxiety. Sept. 11 was only a short time in the past. The first Bali bombing had just occurred, and although Bali is far away from Tokyo, Japanese people go there on vacation all the time. There were a number of Japanese victims in Bali. Everyone’s fears, in the United States and Japan and other places, were so murky and so enormous. It was hard to distinguish an immediate danger from a remote danger. You could go around and hear people who had never thought about military matters, speaking with precision about the kinds of missiles being produced in North Korea, and how easily they might hit Japan.
If you go
“Wounded Cities: Photographs by Leo Rubinfien” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art
Where: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW
When: Through Jan. 25
Info: $6; free for age six and under
