Cannon Hersey can scarcely finish introducing himself before launching into a passionate soliloquy on the achievements of his father and grandfather, artist John R. Hersey Jr. and journalist/author John Hersey, whose seminal article on the dark truths of the Hiroshima bombing took up an entire issue of The New Yorker in 1946. These three men, united by blood and the narrative threads of their diverse portfolios, are appearing together in a spectacularly intimate new show at the Carrie Chen Gallery on Railroad Street in Great Barrington, running from August 6th to September 25th.
When Carrie and her husband Stanley Cohen moved to the Berkshires in 2016, “I didn’t have a plan to own a gallery. We just loved the vibrant, lively scene of Great Barrington and the people it attracts. I saw that the camera shop on Railroad Street was for sale and bought it, without knowing what to do with it.” Carrie recalls with a commingling of delight and disbelief. Cannon, himself a prolific visual artist, is friends with and has sold some of his own pieces to Carrie and her husband. Together they hatched the idea for this multi-generational exhibition after Cannon’s father passed away. “He was one of the first 6 artists in SoHo. He has over 4,400 works, comprising paintings, etchings, abstract and figurative pieces… I didn’t realize the full extent of it until he died. My father was very private.”
In addition to his own robust life in commercial art, Cannon was commissioned in 2015 by NHK World, a subsidiary of national Japanese television, to make a series of documentary films focusing on but not exclusive to the issues surrounding Hiroshima and nuclear atrocity. His grandfather John Hersey’s legacy is perhaps nowhere more appreciated than in Japan, for whom sympathy was decidedly low even long after Hirohito’s surrender and certainly in 1946, less than a year after the bombing. On behalf of a murdered, poisoned, mutilated populace, Hersey’s words were an international cri de cœur against apathy and tribalism, forcing the world to examine the raw, unavoidable truth of deploying nuclear weapons against a civilian population. “It’s said that 8 percent of people changed their minds about the morality of the bombing immediately after the article was first published,” Cannon reflects, having taken 28 trips to Hiroshima in the past seven years, noting that President Truman “had forbidden journalists from writing about these kinds of things. It was extraordinarily brave, and my grandfather received threats. He had to go into hiding with his family.” Despite resistance from the military industrial complex and its minions, ABC News ran the article, as did the BBC. Slowly, word got out and the tide of opinion shifted.
In preparation for his documentaries and for The Meaning of Memory, Cannon has spent countless turns of the hourglass at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, archival home to alumnus John Hersey’s many documents and artifacts, a number of which will be appearing in The Meaning of Memory. “Part of this show which we feel is very important is the fact that it honors Cannon for his archival work,” Carrie emphasizes. Cannon will be celebrated on August 5th by The Scone Foundation, receiving its Annual Archivist Award recognizing an archivist or activist who has made a significant contribution in such areas as resisting censorship, preserving historical memory or by providing support to scholars conducting research in history and biography. “Some elements of this show, certain fabrics and materials, were woven and crafted by artisans from Hiroshima, like the kimono which was gifted to us by survivors. There is great beauty in the resilience of survival. I think we can all relate in some small way after the Covid years,” Cannon opines with a genuine note of optimism.
Carrie adds excitedly: “This is where these works all come together. John, John R. Jr. and Cannon are all “reporting the truth of our world”, so to speak, but with different visual languages.” “I’m very inspired by my father’s work,” Cannon agrees, “because it’s all about freedom of expression and joy, the energy moving through the art and through the spectator.” In his own work, Cannon has increasingly sought to embrace principals of liberal idealism and social justice. “When I started to make this shift, around seven years ago, I noticed a drop off in business. Sometimes you have to take a financial hit to work on something that really matters.”
If The Meaning of Memory represents a reunion of sorts for the Hersey family, it is also part of a seismic shift that may be occurring across the country. Carrie reflects on the pandemic and how it has shifted perspectives about the region: “Great Barrington was an intellectual hub and a home for the arts before all this, but since the pandemic I think many people have rediscovered how much the Berkshires has to offer.” With towns doubling and sometimes tripling in population during lockdown, people were essentially forced to sample another way of life, and found that they rather liked it. Cannon has seen this very clearly from his front row seat in Manhattan: “City people are transitioning to being there once a week, rather than coming to the countryside only for the weekend. It’s a major shift.” Cannon mentions that Carrie and her husband are opening a gallery in Shanghai “to bring Berkshires artists to the world and vice versa. There is a global aspect to all art.”
As the world shrinks, the weaponry which brought us into the Atomic Age constitutes a villain of increasing menace. With Putin rattling his plutonium sabre and U.S. presidents in recent administrations giving carte-blanche to nuclear weapons manufacturers, the menu of possibilities can be unpalatable for those working against the forces of death and destruction. Cannon remembers his early childhood, where he lived for a time at the legendary Dakota apartment building in Manhattan. “I played with John Lennon and his son all the time. When he was shot on our doorstep, I was four years old. Later, it made me ask the question: what happens to people who are working for peace?” Undaunted, the Herseys have been doing their part and won’t soon stop. The Meaning of Memory’s opening night is this August 6th, exactly 77 years since more than 100,000 citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated from the face of the Earth.
