Recent Work: Ukedo for The Economist

Last year I was given the opportunity to photograph a piece for the Economist, looking back on the March 11 East Japan earthquake and tsunami through the lens of two women who were displaced by the disaster.

As ever, visiting the sites where the tsunami tore through is a humbling and intensely sad experience - the town of Ukedo where the story was focused is nothing more than a flattened wasteland, ten years on. The only intact building is the elementary school which somehow survived and stands empty and fenced off. This was the school of Wakana Yokoyama, who was only 12 at the time of the tsunami. Now she is a university student in Sendai, but feels constantly displaced and directionless, her home having been completely wiped off the map. 

Before the tsunami she was in a dance troupe with another woman, Shigeko Sasaki. Shigeko currently lives in Iwaki, a few hours drive from the site where Ukedo once stood. The story delves into the fraying bond between the two women in the aftermath of an unthinkable disaster. The text by Henry Tricks is very compelling and certainly worth your time - check it out here: https://www.economist.com/1843/2021/03/04/after-the-tsunami-what-happened-to-the-girl-from-fukushima

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