Haruka Sakaguchi Captures Cultural Identities Through the Lens

Air Dates: July 31-August 6, 2023

The photographers eye sees things the rest of us might not.  Haruka Sakaguchi uses the camera to tell stories about cultural identity and intergenerational trauma.

Sakaguchi is a Japanese documentary photographer based in New York City. She was born in Osaka, Japan and immigrated to the US with her parents when she was three months old. Sakaguchi’s documentary work focuses on cultural identity and intergenerational trauma.  Her clients have included The New York Times, National Geographic, Time Magazine, ProPublica, The New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, BBC News, Bloomberg Businessweek, NPR, Newsweek and The Washington Post among other publications.

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Sakaguchi discusses some of her work documenting the intergenerational trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 1945 project. She says, “project is a portrait series of atomic bomb survivors, or hibakusha in Japanese, who were inflicted by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”  She adds that she interviewed and photograph over 50 hibakusha and their descendants as a part of the project.

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. A full listing of the national television distribution is available at this link. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 4:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m. 9:30 p.m. ET, and Monday 2:30 a.m. ET, on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at Salve Regina University. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.