Monthly Archives: July 2019

Photo of the Week: HAGIWARA Hiroko and FUKUZAWA Junko

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Laurie says:

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This photo of Hagiwara Hiroko and Junko Fukazawa is from my Women of Japan project.

FUKUZAWA Junko

In summer of 1985 we traveled Europe together. We visited art galleries to see works produced by women artists whom we had listed based on our joint research.

Somewhere in Eastern Europe we became acquainted with a couple from Spain and had a meal with them. When we said we had been friends for twenty-five years, the combination of the length of time and our Asian faces seemed to cause them some confusion. The couple quizzically asked us if we met at the age of five. Twenty years have passed since the tour to Europe.

I tell her what I see, think and find out in my everyday life. Minute or even trivial discoveries are sometimes interesting and valuable. I appreciate the fact that I can talk about such small but precious experiences of mine, to the same person who has listened to me for decades.

Laurie’s shooting session started from her hotel room. We went out to the park and stopped at several points for Laurie to take pictures. Our walking pace slowed down and the phrases we exchanged became shorter. I climbed up a pine tree. My friend was on the ground below me. I just saw her back. We both looked at Laurie’s camera. Laurie was looking up at me.

(translation by Hagiwara Hiroko)

HAGIWARA Hiroko

When I met her at the age of twelve, she was taller than me by over forty centimeters. I thought the world must be seen rather differently from forty centimeters higher. Thereafter, the height difference became a bit smaller. But our lives have followed different paths for over forty years since then, which have produced enormous differences.

We posed for Edison together to be photographed. Approximately one hundred pictures were taken. A year later Edison showed me the shot which she had selected and I accepted it as a matter of fact.

I called her and asked to guess which shot had been selected. She answered without delay, ‘It should be the one with us and the pine tree in the park.’ She can see what I cannot see. Is it because she has seen the world from a higher point of view or is it because our lives have been different? Can this question be answered?

It is remarkable that Edison chose the photograph that represents such differences between us besides our decades-long friendship.

(translation by Hagiwara Hiroko)

深澤純子
1985年夏、少ない資料から女性画家を探し出して作ったリストを携えて、ヨーロッパの美術館を二人で訪ね歩き、その作品を見て存在を確認して きた。レストランで同席したスペインから来た夫婦に「あなたたちはいつから友達?」と聞かれて、「25年前から」と答えたら、「え、じゃ5歳のときか ら?」と驚かれてしまった。それももう20年前。
私が生活の中で、経験し、考え、発見したことを彼女に伝える。微細なことほど貴重で、一見くだらないことほど、面白い発見だったりする。長い年月、ぶれることのない同じ相手に自分を伝えられることは、人生において、どれほど幸運なことであるか、はかり知れない。
撮影は、ホテルのローリーの部屋から始まり、公園のあちこちで続けられた。だんだんと3人の歩くペースがゆっくりとなり、おしゃべりも短いフ レーズになってくる。私は木に登ってみた。私の前には彼女がいるが、彼女の顔は見えない。二人の視線の先は、ローリーの持つカメラだ。ローリーが見上げて いる。

萩原弘子
初めて会ったのが12歳。そのときの身長差は40センチ以上だったのではないだろうか。私より40センチも高いところから見ると、世界はずいぶ ん違って見えるだろうと思ったものだ。身長差はその後ほんの少し縮まったものの、あれから40年の人生は、別のものをそれぞれのなかに積もらせてきた。
そんな2人がそろってエディソンの被写体になり、さまざまなロケーションで100枚近くが撮影された。1年後、エディソンが選んだ1枚を、まず私だけが見る機会があった。どの1枚になるか、予測する根拠もなければ勘も働かなかった私は、ただ「これなのか」と思った。
まだ見ていない彼女に電話して、どのショットが選ばれたと思うかと尋ねると、「公園の松の枝で撮った1枚でしょ」とあっさり答えが返ってきた。 私には見えないものが見えるのは、10代の頃から、私より40センチ高い視点で遠くを見晴るかしてきたからなのか、それともその後の40年の人生の違いな のかは、なんともわからない。
エディソンの1枚には、長年の友人関係に加えて、そんな違いまでも写っているのが驚きである。

萩原弘子
初めて会ったのが12歳。そのときの身長差は40センチ以上だったのではないだろうか。私より40センチも高いところから見ると、世界はずいぶ ん違って見えるだろうと思ったものだ。身長差はその後ほんの少し縮まったものの、あれから40年の人生は、別のものをそれぞれのなかに積もらせてきた。

そんな2人がそろってエディソンの被写体になり、さまざまなロケーションで100枚近くが撮影された。1年後、エディソンが選んだ1枚を、まず私だけが見る機会があった。どの1枚になるか、予測する根拠もなければ勘も働かなかった私は、ただ「これなのか」と思った。

まだ見ていない彼女に電話して、どのショットが選ばれたと思うかと尋ねると、「公園の松の枝で撮った1枚でしょ」とあっさり答えが返ってきた。 私には見えないものが見えるのは、10代の頃から、私より40センチ高い視点で遠くを見晴るかしてきたからなのか、それともその後の40年の人生の違いな のかは、なんともわからない。

エディソンの1枚には、長年の友人関係に加えて、そんな違いまでも写っているのが驚きである。

I Dreamed I Was a Moonwalking Astronaut in My Playtex Space Suit

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two women in 1960s bras and girdles gossiping with each other, and a male astronaut in a spacesuit, with his helmet in his handDebbie says:

I’m old enough to remember bra ads that looked like the left side of the image above. And I’m delighted to see several media outlets covering a previously ignored story: the Apollo 11 spacesuits — the ones that the first men on the moon wore — were designed and made by women who worked for Playtex, known only for bras and girdles.

One of the underrated technical challenges of going to the Moon was designing the spacesuits. The suits had to be inflated and pressurized from the inside—meaning, they had to carry around a tiny version of the atmosphere human beings require to stay alive. The suits were, in essence, sophisticated balloons.

They also had to be tough, able to withstand a temperature range of perhaps 500º, from –280º in shadow to +240º in sun, as well as survive being hit by a micrometeorite going 36,000 mph while astronauts were wearing them.

The most daunting challenge? The suits also had to be flexible.

Astronauts had to be able to move with almost the same freedom, flexibility, and nimbleness that they would on Earth. They had to be able to climb, bend over, twist and look around, and most difficult of all, move their arms and hands so they could get anything done on the surface of the Moon or while spacewalking. The gloves, said one official, should allow an astronaut to pick up a dime.

Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon 50 years ago this week. I remember it; almost everyone my age and even 10-12 years younger remembers it. Thanks to Margot Lee  Shetterly’s best-selling book Hidden Figures, and the movie made from it, many of us now know more about  the Black women like Katherine Johnson who were essential to the calculations behind the space program, but until this week I didn’t know about the women who were essential to the spacesuits.

Playtex’s first challenges were political. The big tech companies of the 1960s wanted this gig, and many decision-makers didn’t take a bra-and-girdle company as a serious contender.

At one point, Playtex won the contract to make the suits, was made a subcontractor to Hamilton Standard but then, in a dramatic turn in 1965, was fired by Hamilton Standard, which wanted the suit contract for itself.

Then there was a competition, but Playtex wasn’t invited. Playtex executives pushed their way in (at their own expense), and in six weeks the company designed and built a suit which (among other tests) was field-tested on a high-school football field, and passed with flying colors.

The technical challenges were perhaps more daunting than the political ones:

The sewing of the astronauts’ suits turned out to be daunting and demanding. Playtex, which renamed its industrial division ILC Dover during the spacesuit work (after its Delaware headquarters), brought skilled seamstresses over from its consumer products factories. “I was sewing [latex] baby pants,” said Eleanor Foraker, who would go on to be a spacesuit assembly supervisor, “and an engineer came to me and asked me if I would mind trying something else.”

Some of the layers were, in fact, composed of bra and girdle material, including nylon tricot.

The suits were a huge success, and Neil Armstrong wrote a fan letter about them. In the most important victory for Playtex, “that same division of Playtex, now the independent company ILC Dover, still makes every NASA spacesuit, from its headquarters at 1 Moonwalker Road.”

I am no longer amazed by how many ways women’s contributions are replaced from history that is framed as entirely male, and I have never been surprised by the vast range of skills women continuously bring to the table. And yet, this story is especially delightful, partly because the tech involved is coded so essentially female (bras and girdles!) and partly because it’s just amusing to think of those hyper-male-hero astronauts with their lives depending on nylon tricot.