My Fukushima and Chernobyl light painting photographic project is appearing in France’s Polka Magazine this month.
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My Fukushima and Chernobyl light painting photographic project is appearing in France’s Polka Magazine this month.
Before the Fukushima disaster, Hiroshi Kanno was a vegetable farmer from Kusano, Iitate. At his original farm, he grew 35 different kinds of vegetables. Since being evacuated, he has tried to rebuild what he can of that on a new plot of land 10km from Fukushima city, but while he can replant his vegetables, his lost community is not so easy to re sow.
Decontamination work in Iitate has been in full swing for a long time, and literal mountains of bags are piling up all over around the village, but despite local government keenness to lift the evacuation order and let people return, there is little appetite to return among people like Toru Anzai.
Seiki Sugano and Minako Sugano always wanted to raise their children in the mountains, so their house in Ryozen, Oguni, with its plum orchard in the hills around Fukushima was perfect. At least it was, until March, 2011.
The Sato family has lived and worked in Iitate for generations, but it is now one of the more contaminated areas in Fukushima.
For two decades, Ms Sadako Monma has run a small nursery school, Soramame (meaning Beans), in Fukushima. Everything changed for her after the meltdowns at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
This video uses a new light painting method to explore the impacts of lingering radioactivity in Fukushima and Chernobyl-impacted Russia, on communities.
Inspired by the Immaterials project (https://vimeo.com/20412632) the process uses a custom-made LED stick, connected to a geiger counter, which shows radiation levels in the environment in real time. Coupled with a long camera exposure, we created ribbons of light around homes, businesses, and community areas in Japan and Russia.
After almost two years of development, my photo project using LED lights, a Geiger counter, and long exposure photography to map radiation levels in Fukushima and Chernobyl-impacted Russia is out.