ROLLS TOHOKU is basically the best collection of images to surface from Tohoku, the area of Japan that has been damaged by the tsunami. The concept of the ROLLS project is simple: give people in these areas disposable cameras, have them shoot over the course of a few days, show the unedited results online. In taking a photo of something tragic there’s always the possibility of just turning it into an easily consumable aesthetic object. That’s not at all the case here though. I want to thank the guy who thought of this project, not because I think it’s going to produce the next wave of photo stars but because it is pleasant to see something real.

What’s really excellent about this project is that it tells you if the photographer is an adult or child, and also where they are currently living. I was particularly struck by photos taken by a few different children around Watanoha Elementary School, near Ishinomaki (Google Map here).

There’s a whole range of emotions here, which sometimes are a bit surprising. We can see some friends running around and making faces for the camera in front of piles of debris which have been piled up in the schoolyard. On the one hand I think: kids are kids, put a camera in front of a 12-year-old and they’re damn well going to make a funny face. Still, it seems like they are well aware of what’s happening, so maybe they are just making the best of the situation, “putting one foot in front of the other” and getting on with their lives. In any case, this is essential viewing.

I’ve updated my earlier post with links related to the earthquake, and will continue to add relevant projects as they show up.

Kaho Imai:

Mizuki Atsumi:

Keiya Ustumi:

In this post I’m linking to some photographs related to the earthquake. There are two groups here, journalistic photographs of the damage in Tohoku, and snapshots taken by photographers in Tokyo. How much the earthquake shows up on this blog will depend on the response it provokes from photographers here. Of course it will be significant, but powerful work may not emerge immediately—Richard Misrach’s excellent post-Katrina book “Destroy This Memory“ just came out last year. I heard that Naoki Ishikawa is up in Tohoku shooting right now. If that’s true, it’s a good sign.

Photojournalistic links

Andrew Burton was in Tohoku on assignment for USA Today. He wrote a thoughtful post examining his own practice of “parachuting” in and out of disaster sites around the world. Some photos of his last day are in this post, more if you click around.

James Nachtwey for TIME. There are words and photos here; they’re both overwrought the pictures generally let the scale of the disaster speak for itself.

An LPV edit of photos taken on the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s “Operation Tomodachi,” its rescue mission to Tohoku.

Photographer links

Coco Young: Some really good posts on her blog of snapshots taken around Tokyo after the earthquake.

Shin Suzuki: Atmospheric photos of Tokyo from the day of the quake.

Patrick Tsai: A diary, with some pictures, of his first week after the earthquake.

John Sypal: Scans from a roll he shot on a five hour walk home after getting stranded.

Charlie Kirk: Unsettling photos of people looking worried in Tokyo.

Bonus radiation link

Nice graphs about current radiation levels. No need for alarm!

Update 4/15/11:

ROLLS TOHOKU is a project where a photographer gave disposable cameras to people (including children) living in areas affected by the tsunami. The photos are now online, and they provide a perspective on the events in Tohoku which photojournalists probably cannot.

A series of AP images showing family photographs that have been recovered, and how they’re being displayed in gyms so people can find them again.

Update 4/19/11:

Some more images from photojournalists:

Jake Price for the BBC. Interesting comments, he’s taken a small beating here for shooting photos like Nachtwey’s.

Dominic Nahr for TIME, this falls into many of the traps of disaster photography.

Very thoughtful post from Ikuru Kuwajima, a Japanese photojournalist who has lived outside of Japan for the last 8 years. Recommended.

I’m taking refuge in Seoul right now with my girlfriend, who is Korean. The first day here I resolved to avoid Japan-related news, a policy which ended up carrying over to the second day. After the post-quake stress, it was necessary to unwind—and I mean this in an almost literal way. An hour or so after the earthquake hit, as the gravity of the situation became apparent, adrenaline took over and did not let up for days. Living in this state twisted my thoughts and crippled my decision making. Booking this flight out put me at ease, but even then I couldn’t believe what I was doing, I almost talked myself out of it. There is something exciting about this time, when the city becomes a wild place. The aftershocks were not reason enough to leave, but the situation in Fukushima really poked a hole in the quasi-romantic, urban camping fantasy of holing up in one’s apartment with food and batteries.

The problem with the situation in Fukushima is that the quality of information is so poor. It’s hard to trust what TEPCO and the government is saying, but it’s equally hard to believe that someone in Washington really knows what’s going on either. It’s incredible that even with the full attention of the world’s media on a tiny area, we are still in the realm of speculation. Cameron Allan McKean is writing as clearly as possible about this experience. He’s around Osaka right now, having left Tokyo a few days ago.

Cameron said this as well, but what we really want is to go back to Tokyo. After the mental break of the first two days in Seoul, we’re starting to live in reality again: reading the news, thinking about Tokyo, talking about when we might be able to return. Although we’ve unwound from the stress of the earthquake, we’re not at all back to normal. It’s my sneaking feeling that things may be the same for Tokyo.

The photo is from Tokyo’s Yushima Station, at about 7pm, a few hours after the earthquake.

A couple of weeks ago Marc emailed me a link to some work by Stephen Vaughan, a British photographer who is working on a project about the relationship between geologic activity and civilization in Japan. It’s called “The Catfish Sleeps.” The work struck me as way too vague, but it’s certainly timely, and he was supposed to be coming to Japan sometime this month. It’s definitely make or break time for his project!

I assume that by now you are aware of the earthquake that’s hit Japan. I’m OK for now, I am in my apartment in Tokyo with my girlfriend and a bunch of food. It’s difficult to know how scared we should be, which I think makes things scarier. Watching the news on TV increases my own hysteria, so I’m giving that a break for a moment. The things I’ve read in the past hour about the nuclear reactor link have been more positive, which is nice of course. Still, it hasn’t even been two days, so many people here are on edge.

Anyway, two series have come to mind in the past couple of days. The first is Ryuji Miyamoto’s photographs taken after the 1995 earthquake in Kansai. Some photos are here and here. The second is Robert Polidori’s “Zones of Exclusion,” which is a project he made at Chernobyl. Some photos are here, though I’m honestly not searching that hard right now.