Sir Kazuo Ishiguro
1 portrait matching these criteria:
- subject matching 'Diversity tour'
© The Douglas Brothers
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro
by The Douglas Brothers
lith print, November 1989
8 7/8 in. x 7 in. (227 mm x 177 mm) image size
Given by The Douglas Brothers, 2015
Primary Collection
NPG P2009
On display in Room 28 on Floor 2 at the National Portrait Gallery
Artistback to top
- The Douglas Brothers (1952-; 1962-), Photographers. Artist or producer of 14 portraits.
This portraitback to top
The Japanese-born writer Kazuo Ishiguro was photographed in the year his third novel, The Remains of the Day, was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction. The novel journeys into the imprecise and unreliable memories of its protagonist, the butler Mr. Stevens. The Douglas Brothers’ ghost-like portrait imitates this structure, as Ishiguro’s features simultaneously emerge from and evaporate into the darkness that surrounds him. As the Brothers explained, they used shadowy interiors ‘to isolate the sitter, to cut out all background interference. We used darkness to illuminate our subjects’.
Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top
- Out of the Shadows: Portraits by the Douglas Brothers (7 August 2017 - 28 January 2018)
Events of 1989back to top
Current affairs
96 people are crushed to death at the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield. The accident took place when Liverpool fans were all let into the stadium at once. Incoming crowds crushed people against a fence used to prevent pitch-invasions. Following the Taylor Report into the incident standing terraces and fences between fans and pitch were banned.Art and science
Following the publication of Anglo-Indian writer Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses in 1988, the leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, announces that the book is 'blasphemous against Islam' and places a fatwah (death sentence) on Rushdie, who is forced into hiding for several years.International
The Berlin Wall is dismantled, reunifying East and West Germany and symbolising the end of the Cold War. Following a decision to allow East Berliners to cross the border with valid visas, crowds swarmed the border crossings. Guards soon gave up trying to stop them, and the physical dismantlement of the wall soon began.Approximately 2,000 Chinese demonstrators are massacred in Tiananmen Square while protesting against the government.
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