Curator

“Fill in the Blanks - 空白を埋める“  

Kazuma Obara

Sep 23 - Oct 17, 2021

Nijo-jo Castle Ninomaru Palace Daidokoro Kitchen / KYOTOGRAPHIE 2022 Main Program

In 2011, Kazuma Obara started his career as a photojournalist covering the Great East Japan earthquake. In the disaster-affected region, he met the workers decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant with whom he made close friendships over time. Obara was deeply touched and shaken by the words of these people who were working under harsh conditions while having suffered great damages from the disaster. At the same time, he realized how the practices of the mainstream media to protect the anonymity of the victims often left the narratives of these people untold, which led his friends to be in an even more isolated and marginalized place in society.

With this as the starting point, he became devoted to the issues of the people who have been affected by the disasters and catastrophes and are ultimately left behind. He has since covered stories on the victims of the bombing of Osaka during WWII, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the Bikini hydrogen bomb experiments, the war victims of the Japanese army, and finally, the medical care workers and the patients who had been stigmatized during the COVID-19 pandemic. He deliberately chose the least accessible places and incidents that seem to be lacking the complete pictures to fill in the blanks among the pre-existing stories.

He started as a journalist, but there is an episode with one of his subjects that shaped his approach and pushed him to become the artist that he is today. In Fukushima, he developed a close friendship with a surfer who shared, “it hurts us when our beach is described as contaminated.” These words struck him with the realization that the Fukushima landscape before his eyes is seen very differently by the people who have decided to stay and envision a future there, no matter how compromised the place is by the radiation and the earthquake. Since then, he relentlessly experimented with different methods to visualize the scenery and the emotions that he did not directly experience himself.

Waves and Home presented in this exhibition is the result of these efforts. He created images by letting the waves at a beach in Fukushima crash into hemp paper coated with cyanotype chemicals, then recorded the chemical reactions over an hour and a half by taking more than 700 photographs. He tried to visualize the image of the beach by allowing the local nature to interact with the materials with less manipulation from his part.

In early 2021, to express the situation in Japan where the COVID-19 patients and medical workers were subjected to social stigma, he shot dozens of room keys of the hotel that was converted into the COVID-19 Recovery Accommodation Facilities. Each time a patient recovers and leaves the facility the key is disinfected by sodium hypochlorite. Repetitive images of worn-out room keys evoke the number of people he is thinking of and a sense of a silent cry. The calm blue tone of each image is a stark contrast to the strong message that the work delivers.

His diverse mode of expression also includes video work consisting of numerous interviews and archiving of Process Records. Process Record is a traditional method used in the field of nursing education in the United States since the 1950s, where the nurse would look back on interactions with their patients and reconstruct the scenes minute by minute. He asked the nurses, who were taking on unfamiliar tasks during the pandemic, to fill in the paper with three columns titled “What I saw /heard “followed by “What I thought/felt” and then “What I said/did.”

The Process Records which he has archived describe the last moments of the patients who sadly without being able to say goodbye to their loved ones, passed away in confusion and loneliness, only to be put away in a body bag. One must brace themselves to read about these distressful situations. But as you read on, you will begin to see the dignity that each nurse puts into treating each person.

We chose a few words spoken by the people in the video work and presented them on the walls of the exhibition space. “I couldn’t think of living anywhere else,” said a Fukushima resident who suffered a great loss and still suffers from fear of radiation. “At the beginning, I was gripped with fear. But somehow, that fear faded over time,” spoke a young nuclear power plant decommissioning worker. “After putting the deceased patient into the body bag, I put the blanket over them. Even though I do not see their face, I still know that they lay there,” said a nurse who treated a COVID-19 patient. These were the words of the people that Obara continued to cover. The images that he shows us are not the faces of the victims, nor the heroes, but the resilient people who remain dignified, work, and go on with their lives despite of the crises.

A nurse said, “A wall separated the normal people from the COVID-19 people. I felt very strange moving across this newly set border.” These words echo the feeling Obara experienced in Fukushima himself 10 years ago and the motivation behind all of his work. These words also contain the key to overcoming whatever disasters we might face in the future. If we as individuals could sense the peculiarity when a line is drawn between “the normal” and “the victims,” only then will we finally make the first step towards true collective healing and recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake of 10 years ago.

In the hope that the audience would extend their thoughts towards individual person affected by the disaster and recognize their humanity,I borrow the words often spoken by Kazuma Obara to name this exhibition Fill in the Blanks.

Catalogue Text: Marina Amada