osoab
30th March 2011, 09:14 AM
Way too much text to post it all. Way too many photos to link too.
37 Frames : Great Tohoku Earthquake & Tsunami 2011 Japan… The Black Mouth (http://www.tokyophotographers.com/2011/03/37-frames-great-tohoku-earthquake-tsunami-2011-japan-the-black-mouth-1.html)
If tears were words, these reflections would have written themselves a thousand fold. We are back in Tokyo after our northbound Tohoku visit to aid with relief efforts and to start the process of documenting what is undoubtedly one of the most horrific natural disasters in recent history. The words won’t come easily, sometimes having a lens as a filter is a much preferred medium. Although I think my hands were shaking too much to be of any good. Hard-hitting journalists we are not. It’s not in our nature, with no avenue of disassociation. Hopefully simple, connected storytellers, we can be. I hope to make some kind of sense of the past few days, share our memories as best we can, keeping in mind what is most achingly obvious – that this is all just so raw. A huge, gaping hole of agony. A coastline ravaged beyond recognition. Families, communities, towns and cities torn apart. That the trail of destruction led by the tsunami, is of a scale you can truly only realize with your own eyes. It is simply massive. And obscene. There’s no real way to even describe it.
So we are back, this disaster changing everything on so many different levels – it’s hard to comprehend. We’ll all never quite be the same, desu ne? We are thankful not for the first time of the many things we take for granted. And knowing we now have to relieve it all in photos; bitterly painful, with heavy, grieving hearts but always mindful of a greater responsibility to tell and share a story. I’d like to think when Shakespeare wrote “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break,” that he was also referring to a more a modern photographic application. So that’s what we’ll go with for now. And hope it speaks to just someone.
http://offtheplanet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451612a69e2014e87061e89970d-800wi
37 Frames : Great Tohoku Earthquake & Tsunami 2011 Japan… The Black Mouth (http://www.tokyophotographers.com/2011/03/37-frames-great-tohoku-earthquake-tsunami-2011-japan-the-black-mouth-1.html)
If tears were words, these reflections would have written themselves a thousand fold. We are back in Tokyo after our northbound Tohoku visit to aid with relief efforts and to start the process of documenting what is undoubtedly one of the most horrific natural disasters in recent history. The words won’t come easily, sometimes having a lens as a filter is a much preferred medium. Although I think my hands were shaking too much to be of any good. Hard-hitting journalists we are not. It’s not in our nature, with no avenue of disassociation. Hopefully simple, connected storytellers, we can be. I hope to make some kind of sense of the past few days, share our memories as best we can, keeping in mind what is most achingly obvious – that this is all just so raw. A huge, gaping hole of agony. A coastline ravaged beyond recognition. Families, communities, towns and cities torn apart. That the trail of destruction led by the tsunami, is of a scale you can truly only realize with your own eyes. It is simply massive. And obscene. There’s no real way to even describe it.
So we are back, this disaster changing everything on so many different levels – it’s hard to comprehend. We’ll all never quite be the same, desu ne? We are thankful not for the first time of the many things we take for granted. And knowing we now have to relieve it all in photos; bitterly painful, with heavy, grieving hearts but always mindful of a greater responsibility to tell and share a story. I’d like to think when Shakespeare wrote “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break,” that he was also referring to a more a modern photographic application. So that’s what we’ll go with for now. And hope it speaks to just someone.
http://offtheplanet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451612a69e2014e87061e89970d-800wi