Masayo Nishimura: The New Horizon – Scenes in northern Japan nearly two years after the disaster, April 29, 2014 – May 24, 2014.

Masayo Nishimura, a native of Japan, took a bike trip up the north Pacific coast of Japan to record the devastation of the Great Tohoku Kanto Earthquake & Tsunami of March 11, 2011 and the later consequential Nuclear Disaster. The first noticeable feature of Nishimura’s work is the quality of the photographs: clear, clean, crisp and intelligible. The second is the stark, barren, exposed burnt slabs of concrete foundations and stretches of black grass, and land cleared of structures and remains: evidence of tragedy.

Masayo does not romanticize nor dodge the truth; she uses frontal, flat horizons that hold the disaster in plain view inviting us to understand the magnitude of the trauma. Masayo takes these pictures with a deep reverence for the dead, focusing on impromptu altars and mourning sites. She spoke of her own shaking hands while holding the camera, acutely conscious of the essence of the souls still occupying the space and the heavy loss. Yet she is careful to connect with hope: a dragonfly alights on a steel rod; rows of sunflowers (planted both to absorb the salt but also to ease the pain for mourners); trucks and workers busy wiping away the debris preparing for the new. She has memorialized the devastation and loss and evidenced the beginnings of renewal of a beautiful seaside area ravaged by nature combined with human error. Beautiful show!

---One of the Ceres member wrote this after our monthly meeting in early May. I was quite impressed with the quality of the writing as well as very flattered with this rave review. Thank you very much!! Tomorrow, I'm going back to Osaka Japan.