The photograph shows an Ainu woman from northern Japan with tattooed lips. The upper lip is slashed during childhood and ashes are rubbed in to leave a scar, circa 1960. The scene dates to around 1960, a detail that changes how you read every face and object in the frame.
The 1960s moved fast: the space race put satellites and then astronauts overhead, television replaced print as the main source of news, and social change swept through music, fashion, and politics. Photojournalism was at its peak, with picture magazines and newspapers employing armies of photographers.
Most photography of the period chased celebrities and headlines, which makes surviving images of daily routine all the more precious. This is what the world actually looked like when nobody thought it was worth remembering.
