Kazuma Obara, a Japanese photo artist, had his exhibition on Fukushima disaster opened at the Kyiv History Museum on March 4. Obara, 30, reveals the real stories of the liquidators of the nuclear power plant accident, while also plans to launch a special photo project on Chornobyl.
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“I was very shocked when I met the workers of Fukushima nuclear power plant for the first time and heard their stories,” he says.“I decided to show them as they were, without the stereotypes. Their faces, which were covered with mosaics on television; their real voices, which were usually distorted so they wouldn’t be indentified.”
“On TV screens we saw only their hands. I wanted to show what was hidden from us,” Obara explains.
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Currently, 7,000 people work at the Fukushima plant. Many of them keep this in secret and do not talk to journalists due to the pressure from their employer, explains Obara.
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Obara is going to visit Chornobyl, 135 kilometers to the north from Kyiv, next week. He shoots those who worked on liquidating the consequences of the accident in order to publish a photo book and have an exhibition similar to his Fukushima project.Anna Korolevska, deputy head of research at Kyiv’s Chornobyl Museum, says it’s not that easy to work on the subject that is classified due to its crucial environmental impact.
“It is so important to organize such cultural projects,” she says. “They can tell the truth about Chornobyl and Fukushima, they draw attention to these problems.”
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