My work Restricted Residence examines the relocation of Japanese citizens to Namie and Iitate, two towns exposed to extreme radioactivity following three nuclear reactor meltdowns and subsequent hydrogen explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant after the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011. A decade on from the leak, various medical agencies such as the World Health Organization agree that the traumatic effects of the disaster have caused multidimensional and long-term mental health conditions.

Now, Namie and Iitate are eerily empty, with just a thousand of the original 27,000 evacuees brave enough to have returned. With the reactors still damaged and uninhabitable radiation hotspots scattered across the landscape, some believe these areas will not be safe for 50 years or perhaps longer.

My photographic practise looks at the social impact of environmental, political and cultural phenomena. My interest in Namie and Iitate was ignited by how these towns had been altered, in both tangible ways: the damage from the tsunami and earthquake, and the following reconstruction work and relocation, and intangible ways: mainly radiation, which has led to a change in how these places are perceived socially and politically. Restricted Residence employs thermal technology used in industrial surveying and medicine but is applied as a metaphor for the hidden stresses of living in a potentially toxic environment. It raises questions about the human costs of manmade disasters and our urgent need to find and implement energy systems that impact less on our fragile environment and generations of the future.

About

Giles Price’s (London, UK) work explores the boundary between conceptualism and documentary practice (experimental documentary). This includes using different types of lens-based technology to investigate the limitations of traditional photography and question what a document is and can be.