Author(s): Anne Nishimura Morse (Curator of Japanese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Photography

The catastrophic events of March 11, 2011 the earthquake, tsunami, and ensuing nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant have been called the triple disaster in Japan. Among the first artists to respond to these experiences were photographers. Some, including those with personal ties to the affected Tohoku region, attempted to document the devastation, drawing on a long history of depicting natural disasters in Japanese art. As the immediate effects of the earthquake and tsunami gave way to the slowly unfolding nuclear disaster, artists began to respond to the challenges of depicting an invisible threat that calls up the collective memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The resulting images assembled in this lavishly illustrated volume are by turns poignant, searing, disturbing and often strangely beautiful. With interpretive essays from leading American and Japanese scholars and statements from the artists themselves, this book presents the unfolding process of how photography can address destruction, social change, anxiety and memory, through images that express emotions beyond words.