From the 247th to 341st Day, Tohoku.
This is the title of the series that Tadashi Ono took between the 247th and 341st day after March 11th 2011, the terrible day in which a huge earthquake and a tsunami devastated part of the Japanese coastline, particularly Tohoku, in the northeast.
During a commissioned work for an architecture magazine, in November 2011, Tadashi Ono travelled along that coastal area, still devastated and flooded, and in the end he realized a large series that not only documents topographically the landscape, but finds a link to the distance between the man and the world he lives in.
“By walking along the edge of the flooded zone, I tried to photograph these suspended landscapes, in transition, transformed by the sea. Their limits become vague. Car wrecks, the quintessence of industrial products, seem to imitate the shapes of waves and mountains. Beneath the wind that sweeps across wastelands, I often had the illusion of being a 19th century photographer in Egypt or Mexico. Destroyed sea walls, cut-off roads, exposed foundations, these constructions of our modern civilization have become the ruins of an archaeological site. As though the tsunami had suddenly projected us towards the future”, Ono says.
Born in Tokyo, Tadashi Ono lives and works in Kyoto and Paris. He is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles. His photographic work seeks to question architecture, environment and history, and has been exhibited at venues including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Since 2007, Ono has undertaken various photographic research projects in South-East Asia and, as curator, he also participated at Photoquai 2009 organized by the Musée du Quai Branly. Since 2011 he has acted as director of the New Photography / Contemporary Art section at the Kyoto University of Art and Design.
Eliseo Barbàra
京都グラフィー 国際写真フェスティバル
Kyotographie International Photography Festival
From April 13 to May 6, 2013
Tadashi Ono
Institut Francais Japon-Kansai
8 Izumidono-cho
Yoshida Sakyo-ku
Kyoto, 603-8146
Japan
