Mayumi Suzuki

The Restoration Will

[ EPF 2017 – FINALIST ]

My parents, who a owned photo studio, went missing after the 2011 tsunami. Our house was destroyed. It was a place for working, but also for living. I grew up there. After the disaster, I found my father’s lens, portfolio, and our family album buried in the mud and the rubble.
One day, I tried to take a landscape photo with my father’s muddy lens. The image came out dark and blurry, like a view of the deceased. Through taking it, I felt I could connect this world with that world. I felt like I could have a conversation with my parents, though, in fact, that is impossible.

The scars on the recovered snapshots sometimes looked like the peninsula on a map. The pacific coast of northern Japan has been the victim of a tsunami many times, including the Meiji Sanriku tsunami in 1896, the Showa Sanriku tsunami in 1933 and a large tsunami caused by an earthquake in Chile, South America in 1960. I tried to visualize these images by making a layer with my scarred family snapshot and the geographic map for my book.

What did my parents want to give us as their last message when they were dying? This question was the basis of this project. Taking photos though my father’s lens was a way to picture this and have a conversation with the deceased again. The black-and-white images in this project were taken with my father’s camera.

This was our town before the tsunami. It was taken by my father in 2006. Onagawa, a town with a population of 10,000, was a small fisherman?s village, one of the world’s top fishing spots. 827 people died or went missing.

I found my father’s large-format camera, some lenses, a strobe light, and his tripod scattered around our house. These became symbolic items representing what the photo studio used to be. When I found them, I felt my parents wanted to remind us, “We were here!”

The family snapshots I found were washed white, the images disappearing. The portraits taken by my father were stained, discolored. These scars are similar to the damage seen in my town, similar to my memories which I am slowly losing.

Two weeks after the tsunami, I went back to Onagawa for the first time with my sister. 70% of the town had been destroyed by the massive tsunami. I couldn’t believe how many buildings were crushed. All of the houses were gone. I saw that part of our house was still standing. Only the darkroom was left, like a symbol of the photo studio.

The noctiluca had such a mysterious dazzling blue light which I had never seen before in my life. On the fishing boat, I was so surprised that it reminded me of my parents. I wonder where my parents have gone now, maybe to Hawaii? We often compare the deceased to stars. The sparkling noctiluca can be thought of this way in my book.

The disaster made us deeply scarred like a snapshot.

I found some snapshots after the tsunami. All were damaged by sea water but it looks fantastic snow for me, even with dust.

I hope to retain my memory and my family history through this book. By arranging these photos, I have attempted to reproduce it.

Short Bio

Born in 1977 in Onagawa, Miyagi and now resides Tokyo, Japan. I work as a visual storyteller to find and create personal narratives. I was born and raised in a family who ran a photo studio founded by her grandfather in 1930 in the town of Onagawa. I studied at Nihon University, College of Art Department of Photography.

March 11, 2011. On this day an incident which changed my life has occurred. My hometown Onagawa was destroyed by the tsunami and my parents went missing. So I decided to start as photography artist to tell the story. I capture them as an individual and not just a faceless figures and leave the photographs as proof of their lives.

In 2014-2015, I had supported with Alejandro Chaskielberg as local location coordinator and professional support assistant in “Otsuchi Future Memories.” In 2016, I participated a workshop “Photobook As Object” by Yumi Goto and Jan Rosseel. I have developed a book with them.

Related Links

mayumisuzuki.jp

—–

The Emerging Photographer Fund is supported by generous donors to the Magnum Foundation