JANIC Fukushima

In February 2014 I traveled to Fukushima, Japan and volunteered as a photographer for JANIC (Japanese NGO Center for International Cooperation). 

I intended to travel for one week only, through highly contaminated areas to document what was going on three years after the triple catastrophe - earthquake, tsunami and nuclear melt down. 

With assistance from the JANIC team I photographed children whose early childhoods have been in a radioactive cloud. I met people whose family had been separated through the disaster. I walked through ‘temporary housing facilities’ and with help from a translator documented the community living there. I saw ‘temporary rubbish piles’ of highly contaminated soil along river ways, near orchards and right in people’s front yards. 

Carrying a radiation monitor, I recorded the radioactivity in each area that I photographed. Some areas had readings of over 2.7 microSievert/hr; the normal background levels for radiation are around 0.1 microSievert/hr. I chose to superimpose these measurements on the photographs in an attempt to make visible the invisible radioactivity. 

These photographs were published in the book ‘Learning from Fukushima’ published by Australian National University Press in both Japanese and English. 

To download the book or to find out more info head to ANU PRESS