These portraits were taken by Guillaume Bression a free lance photographer and founder of the photography collective Trois8. He has won numerous awards for his artistic and documentary projects. These portraits are from his series "Retrace Our Steps" where he returned to the town of Fukashima with former residents after the nuclear meltdown in 2011. There he photographed residents in places that they would frequently visit and then asked them to pose as if nothing had happened.
In the first photo a man in what seems to be some type of Ramen shop stares blankly in the distance. I like the distinct lighting on the mans face as it focuses our attention on his expression. I also think that the foreground and background being somewhat blurred gives the viewer the feeling that the man is lost in his thoughts. The second picture is of a man staring blankly out of the frame. I like how the lighting on the man makes him brighter then the surrounding room that he is in. The greenish red colors of the machine next to him provides a nice contrast to his blueish shirt and smock. In the last photo he again makes use of bright exaggerated lighting to make us focus on the subject. This time it is more obvious that he is using some type of stationary light to illuminate his models. I like the contrast between the light side of the photo where we see the two women, and the dark side, where their is a bar left in ruins.
I chose to share this series because it showcases the dangers of what can happen when nuclear power goes wrong. I don't think the human cost that the Fukashima Diachi disaster has been covered adequately enough by our media. The United States has a number of aging reactors that are located close to the coastline, and as climate change continues to exaggerate weather patterns the likelihood of such disasters will only increase. These photos of a once vibrant community now in ruins should serve as a cautionary example of the human costs of nuclear disasters.
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