Two years ago, in March, Japan drew the world’s attention with millions of viewers glued to their television sets in disbelief as images of the tsunami that engulfed a 400 kilometer swathe of the country’s coastline were beamed into homes around the globe. The sheer scale and horror of the natural disaster was incomprehensible. A wall of water blackened by debris moved at staggering speed destroying everything in its path. Whole communities were washed away, and thousands lost their lives.
Photographer Hans-Christian Schink travelled to the region of Tōhoku a year after the tsunami to document the aftermath. The result is a collection of photographs in the book, Tōhoku.
In these images Schink captures a landscape in mourning. Beautiful, yet haunting, these photographs remind us that while our lives have moved on, and the trivia of daily life that burdens us has reclaimed focus, this land still grieves; for the lives that were lost, for the absence of laughter and joy, and for the things we all take for granted, that indefinable essence that creates communities. The elderly, the young, lovers, married couples and single people all once populated these landscapes. I look at the photographs in this book and I can feel the quiet, the deep emptiness that exists in scenes that are riven by tragedy. There is profound sadness in the stillness of these photographs.
This is an important book because it forces us to remember that while life proceeds apace for many, in Tōhoku, and by extension other parts of Japan affected by the tsunami, the aftermath of such devastation is still very real.
Alison Stieven-Taylor
Tōhoku is published in German/English/Japanese by Hatje Cantz
Texts by Rei Masuda, graphic design by Ingo Scheffler
132 pp. 60 photographs
30.00 x 24.00 cm,
hardcover
ISBN 978-3-7757-3548-3
