Visual Culture Blog

Naoya Hatakeyama, Rikuzentakata, July 2004 © Naoya Hatakeyama

Naoya Hatakeyama, Rikuzentakata, April 2011 © Naoya Hatakeyama

Watching the BBC News in the aftermath of the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami on the east coast of Japan, I vividly remember the foreign correspondent reporting from a town with an unusual name: Rikuzentakata. Little did I know then that Rikuzentakata would come to symbolise the unimaginable destruction of the earthquake and tsunami. In months to come, reporters, journalists and photographers would descend on this town and try to capture the sense of loss and grief caused by the disaster. A documentary called Japan’s Tsunami: Caught on Camera harrowingly dissected the video footage produced by the few survivors who were there that day in March 2011. I would begin to associate Rikuzentakata with an image of destruction.

Naoya Hatakeyama, Untitled from Kesengawa, 2002–10; © Naoya Hatakeyama

Naoya Hatakeyama, Yonesaki-cho 2011.5.1 from Rikuzentakata, and Takata-cho 2011.5.1 from Rikuzentakata; © Naoya Hatakeyama

I only realised later that Rikuzentakata is also the hometown of the photographer Naoya Hatakayema. By mere chance, Hatakeyama embarked on a longterm project in 2002, capturing the town’s close spiritual association with the sea. In one image taken before the tsunami, Hatakeyama photographed a tree with gohei, or wooden wands with paper streamers used in Shinto rituals, which were meant to purify the tree from the spirits. On his return to Rikuzentakata, the massive tree withstood the forces of the tsunami while the destruction of the town is clearly visible in the background to the photograph. Hatakeyama’s personal connection to this place thus resulted in an eerie set of images that capture the town before and after the disaster. His photographs ultimately depict the landscape as a complex set of binary opposites: the past and the present, a once safe place now destroyed.

Naoya Hatakeyama, Untitled from Kesengawa, 2002–10, and Kesen-cho 2011.6.14 from Rikuzentakata; © Naoya Hatekeyama

Koji Onaka, Umimachi, 1991-1993

Koji Onaka, Umimachi, 1991-1993

In his book Umimachi, or literally ‘Ocean Town’ or ‘Sea Town’, the photographer Koji Onaka photographed the Sanriku district, which was badly affected by the tsunami, between 1991 and 1993 (Onaka now sells these photographs to raise funds for children orphaned by the disaster). In the first instance, the photographs depict a sense of romance and nostalgia often associated with sea side towns in Japan. Similar to Shohei Imamura’s film Warm Water Under the Red Bridge, Onaka’s photographs depict a place essentially at peace with itself and its natural surroundings. To emphasise this sense of peacefulness, the photographs are also purposefully banal: boys playing baseball, girls waiting for the school bus, a bunch of fishermen cleaning their tools near the harbour. In the context of the 2011 tsunami, the images are haunting reminders that the tsunami flattened a strip of land photographers once recognised as beacon of peace and harmony. Here, the primary role of photography is as a medium of memory, allowing those who look at photographs to remember a place that does not longer exist.

Lieko Shiga, Found photographs were washed and dried in the community center, 2011; © Lieko Shiga

At the time the earthquake struck, the photographer Lieko Shiga participated in an artists’ residency in a town called Kitagama, roughly 50 miles away from Fukushima. As one of Japan’s most promising young photographers, Shiga is best known for her surreal and magical representation of fantastical scenes of the imaginary. Shiga was personally affected by the disaster as the house she was staying at, her studio and a year’s worth of photographic work was destroyed. Rather than succumbing to the loss of her photographic work, Shiga participated in the clean up of the town, specifically employing her knowledge on photography to save other people’s lost photographs and family albums. Her resulting project is a vast archive of personal photographs that were selflessly collected, cleaned, categorized and archived. Shiga’s approach to the disaster resulted in a community-based project that functioned as a way to contemplate the tragic losses of the disaster via found family photographs. In spite of losing her own photographic work, Shiga traversed Kitagama to help others to locate photographs of loved ones. The curator of Japanese art Lisa Sutcliffe comments on this work: ‘This public service may yet yield some new way of seeing the catastrophe, and will serve as a testament to the lives that were lost or changed irreparably.’ By collecting and representing found photographs Shiga comments on the human and the emotional dimension caused by the trauma of losing friends and family. Photography is not employed to represent the disaster, but rather, it represents an opportunity to confront the trauma it effected.

Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled, 2011; © Rinko Kawauchi

Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled, 2011; © Rinko Kawauchi

The photographer Rinko Kawauchi also travelled to the effected regions on the east coast of Japan. Her previous photographic works are characterized by astute and subtle observations of the every day. Rather than solely training her camera on the destruction caused by the tsunami, Kawauchi noticed a pair of domesticated pigeons who always returned to the same place in one coastal town. Guided by the navigational instincts, the pigeons habitually returned to the place that they new best yet that no longer existed. In as much the Tōhoku represents destruction on an unimaginable scale, Kawauchi’s photographs also signify a sense of renewal.

Yasusuke Ota, Namie Machi, 2011

One of the most surreal yet also touching photographic works to have been produced in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami is Yasusuke Ota’s project The Abandoned Animals of Fukushima. A day after the tsunami damaged a nuclear reactor at Fukushima, those living within 20km of the power plant were forcibly evacuated by the government. In fear of nuclear contamination, inhabitants had to leave their personal belongings, as well as pets and farm animals behind. Two weeks after the evacuation took place, Ota volunteered to enter the ‘no go’ area to provide these animals with food and water. What Ota found were amazingly surreal scenes that could have featured in post-apocalyptic films such as I am Legend: an ostrich that escaped from a nearby farm roaming the streets of Okuma Machi, a bunch of cows apparently lost and confused on a parking lot in Tomioka Machi, and, perhaps most bizarrely, pigs trying to cool their bodies in a puddle on the streets of Namie Machi. Ota’s photographic project adds another dimension to our perception of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami as the roaming animals create a surreal contrast to a place in which life, it appears in the photographs, has otherwise stood still.

Yasusuke Ota, Okuma Machi, 2011

Yasusuke Ota, Tomioka Machi, 2011

In sum, the works I have discussed above point to a number of different strategies and methodologies Japanese photographers have employed to ‘capture’ the disaster. The role of photography in all these works is crucial: rather than depicting loss or destruction directly, these photographers produced deeply personal works that illuminate one particular aspect of the disaster. Faced with destruction on an unimaginable scale, their photographs help us visually and metaphorically contemplate the sense of trauma and loss, while, at the same time, amidst the rubble pockets of life begin to emerge. The photographs also refer to new opportunities and challenges that many photographers have overcome in order to represent fractured communities that are slowly but steadily rebuilding themselves.

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Marco Bohr, Beatles, Chopin and Unknown, 91 x 111 cm c-print, 2007

Regular readers of this blog will know that Japanese visual culture is a topic I often seek to explore in my posts. I have a personal attachment to Japan since I lived in Tokyo from 2003 to 2004 and until today I return about once a year to photograph and conduct research. After the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March this year, I want to give back to a country that has been incredible generous and hospitable to me over the years. This post then is my attempt to raise some money for the more than 100.000 people made homeless on that tragic day in March. All photographs discussed in this post are for sale as framed artworks with fifty percent of the proceeds going to Japan Platform – a local NGO based in Japan that that has established a sophisticated and cost-effective network of support on the ground for victims of the earthquake and tsunami.

Marco Bohr, Brahms No. 3 or No. 4, 91 x 111 cm c-print, 2007

In 2007 I photographed a series of photographs called ‘Floating Cities’ depicting amateur musicians practicing their instruments along the main river on the edge of Tokyo. Unlike previous bodies of work in which I search for the subjects of my photographs by sight, here I found myself searching for the sound of music as I traversed up and down Tamagawa river. The riverside musicians cannot be compared to buskers or those playing music for an audience. Rather, the riverside musicians play for themselves, wishing to improve their music, trying not to bother others while others don’t appear to bother them.

Marco Bohr, Mr. Children and Sergei Nakariakov, 91 x 111 cm c-print, 2007

Marco Bohr, Sunny Rollins, 91 x 111 cm c-print, 2007

The photographs underline that, despite the lack of an audience, the musicians actions nevertheless constitute, albeit only to the camera, a performance. The performative aspect is further emphasized by several photographs being taken under or near a bridge alluding to the proscenium arch of a theatre. The title of the photographs refer to the subjects’ favorite musician suggesting that despite the riverside musicians quest for loneliness, there is a latent desire to be, perhaps one day, as famous as the person whose music they are playing.

Marco Bohr, World Music, 91 x 111 cm c-print, 2007

Marco Bohr, Louis Armstrong, 91 x 111 cm c-print, 2007

Historically speaking, rivers have long been perceived as a place of liberty and artistic freedom in Japanese culture. The emergence of the Kabuki theatre in the Edo period (1603-1868) is inextricably linked to the rivers of the capitol. Crucially, in the summer months the dried up riverbed constituted a space that was not owned by private landowners, nor was it owned by the state. The riverbed thus represented one of the very few urban spaces that was not directly under control of the merchant or samurai class. The Kabuki, with its embrace of performed transgenderism, is deeply linked to the ‘lawlessness’ of the river. It is a similar sense of freedom that is being explored by those seemingly performing to themselves as they practice their instrument.

Marco Bohr, Music from the Shamisen, 91 x 111 cm c-print, 2007

Another reason for the habitual venture to the riverbank is a desire to encounter the natural in the wholly unnatural surroundings of the megapolis Tokyo. The conurbation Tokyo and Yokohoma is home to more than 30 million people – about the population of Canada. In that environment, any sense of nature, solitude or peace is a highly sought after entity. While it is the music that might initially provoke a trip to the river, the trip is also, I would suggest, characterized by the desire to encounter that which is to rare in Tokyo: a glance at the horizon or basking in the sunshine. The riverbank is thus also a highly sought after location for lovers who are periodically visible or even constitute the main subject in the ‘Floating Cities’ project.

Marco Bohr, Berlam Belozo, 91 x 111 cm c-print, 2007

From the perspective of post-tsunami era Japan, clearly, these photographs refer to a far more innocent relationship with ‘nature’. There are no waves of liquid concrete crashing in, there is no sense of an imminent threat, the nuclear crisis was yet to unfold. It is perhaps this contrast which continously reminds me of these photographs I took four years ago.

If you are interested in Japanese photography, please download my essay:
Marco Bohr (2011). ‘Are-Bure-Boke: Distortions in Late 1960s Japanese Cinema and Photography’. Dandelion Journal. Vol. 2, No. 2.

Yurie Nagashima, Kazoku, 1993

In a previous blog post, I wrote about the photographer Yurie Nagashima whose photographs of herself and her family in the nude instigated a dramatic shift in Japanese visual culture. After exhibiting her phenomenally successful Kazoku series in 1993, Nagashima continued to interrogate photographic subjects related to gender, sexuality, representation and the body.

Yure Nagashima, Onion Boob and Sarah Lucas, Self-portrait with Fried Eggs, 1996

In one photograph, she holds an onion in front of her left breast while holding her t-shirt up by her teeth. This form of visual allegory and humorous photographic intervention locates Nagashima alongside artists such as Sarah Lucas who, in one photograph, placed two fried eggs in situ of her breasts. In the case of Lucas, the reference to female fertility and reproductive organs signified by the eggs is clear. In Nagashima’s case however, the onion is more difficult to locate since it does not immediately signify either the male or the female body. Instead, the onion might refer to the trope of perfectibility: the emphasis on aesthetic perfection of fruit and vegetable that is common in Japanese department stores. The perfect watermelon, the perfect carrot, the perfect onion, is, above all, determined by its symmetrical and even visual appearance. Nagashima’s photograph appears to question, even ridicule, this paradigm closely associated with consumerism and the representation of gender. Here, I am referring to consumerism in an economic sense but also consuming food as metaphor for consuming the female body. The onion thus functions as a pun on consuming and being consumed: in contrast to the soothing milk of the mother’s breast, Nagashima purposefully chooses a vegetable known not only for it’s acidic taste, but also, for causing tears. The unpeeling of the onion, and the allegorical pain associated with it, becomes the complete antithesis to the warmth associated with the mother.

Another photograph in which she has painted her breasts in the shape of two cartoon characters suggests that Nagashima’s preferred subject is her own body. Here, the body is not a neutral canvas or a corporeal ground zero, rather, the body functions as a potentially humorous even uncontrollable form explored by the camera. The physical act of taking a self-portrait is more closely located within the realm of performance art as Nagashima interrogates a corporeal and spatial interior by turning the camera on herself. In other words, the intervention takes places in Nagashima’s personal sphere via her body, while the camera acts as documentary device. Similar to the onion photograph, the cartoon characters serve as a visual pun that also acts to defamiliarize body parts. The cartoon characters have the effect of setting the photograph off from the classical iconography of the Nude and enabling it instead to act as asignifier for specific bodily functions. The defamiliarization of body parts also acts to desexualize the body as a whole. This visual methodology is perhaps most apparent in This Time, where Nagashima makes another direct gender specific reference to a bodily function. In his concept of the ‘grotesque body’, the literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin argued that references to bodily excrement can act as a powerful device to invert a hegemonic social order. The allegorical blood on the floor situates the body outside of stereotypical representations of the body in mass media, consumer culture or pornography, placing it instead within a discourse of necessity and privacy.

Yurie Nagashima, This Time

It is ironic that as much Nagashima explores narratives of private life in her photographs, she was herself in the meantime turned into a celebrity figure in Japan. For a period of time in the mid-1990s, newspapers, magazines, TV chat shows, and the so-called ‘wide shows’, relentlessly pursued Nagashima in hopes of featuring the up-and-coming artist in their programming. With the emergence of a number of women photographers in a relatively short time period, from 1993 until about 1996, critics referred to Nagashima as a leader of a ‘girl photography boom’. Nagashima fiercely sought to distance herself from this label and, in the process, became critical of the media attention that her work has provoked.

Yurie Nagashima, Red Undwear

In as much Nagashima appears to engage in the pleasure of looking and being looked at in her photographic series Kazoku, in more recent photographs Nagashima’s gaze back to the spectator is noticeably absent. In one photograph, Nagashima’s back is literally turned towards the spectator. Viewed within the context of Nagashima’s resistance towards the increasing media attention, this gesture signifies her growing desire to be left unmediated. Even if this photograph relates to Nagashima turning away from the camera, from representation, from our gaze, she is still using her body to communicate this message. By performing to the camera, by deconstructing socially constructed gender identities, and by becoming object as much as subject of her photographs, the many bodies of Yurie Nagashima have reset the parameters of photographic discourse in her native Japan.

Please also read my post The Family Photos of Yurie Nagashima.

If you are interested in Japanese photography, please download my essay:
Marco Bohr (2011). ‘Are-Bure-Boke: Distortions in Late 1960s Japanese Cinema and Photography’. Dandelion Journal. Vol. 2, No. 2.