Nagasaki bombing photograph archive offered at RR Auction

An archive of photographs showing the aftermath of the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 will cross the block at RR Auction on September 26.

It's valued in excess of $50,000.

Most of the shots were taken by an American military police officer, although Japanese photographer Yosuke Yamahata captured 24 of them.

Nagasaki bombing photos
Yamahata's photographs show the horrors wrought by the atomic bomb

The police officer has included Yamahata's photographs in with his own and those of other photographers.

Among them are some of Yamahata's most famous images, including one of a mother breastfeeding her child. It appeared in a 1952 edition of Life magazine.

Yamahata went out photographing scenes around the city on August 10, 1945 - the day after the atomic bomb dropped.  

The residual radiation from the blast would lead to his untimely death from cancer in 1965, at the age of 49.

The auction house comments: "Yamahata's photographs of Nagasaki remain the most complete record of the atomic bombing as seen immediately after the bombing, and the New York Times has called his photographs 'some of the most powerful images ever made.'"

Over 250 photographs are included, many of which show scenes of everyday Japanese life away from the fighting.

The lot is just one of a series of fascinating lots to appear in the Remarkable Rarities: Elite 100 auction.

Others include a complete set of 1951 Bowman Jets, Rockets and Spaceships cards and a NASA test robot.

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