It is striking and sad to me that 3/11 will now be as memorable as 9/11. To me, 9/11 (which also happens to be my birthday) is the day America's world changed, when terrorists attacked, bringing us as close to a war zone on our own soil as most of us will ever be. And yesterday's event in 2011 was equally frightening. This year 3/11 was the one year anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan that was a result of massive earthquakes and a tsunami off the northeast coast of the island. Nightline's Bill Weir returned to the area to report one year later and saw dramatic change in some ways and, in other ways, none at all. Some towns cleared, cleaned, and rebuilt, while others remain desolate and barren, except for the now organized piles of debris that break the leveled landscape. ABC's KABC-TV in Los Angeles reports that over 19,000 people were killed in this monumental disaster. What moved me while watching Bill Weir's episode was his brief mention of the photo "memorials" that have been set up in many towns -- basically huge auditoriums filled with photographs of children, mothers, fathers, loved ones found amongst the debris that have been meticulously cleaned and put on display like books appearing spine to spine on shelves in a store, except these thousands of book covers remind us of all the lives this unfortunate disaster touched or, sadly, took. I know that photographs matter to me, but it was poignant to see photographs matter to others. It moved me that someone would value a photograph of a stranger enough to take the time to clean it and display it properly in hopes that a loved one of that stranger would find it and be allowed to at least have that memory of their loved one. Some people are still searching for missing family. Some people in those found photographs probably survived, many probably did not. Seeing the wide angle shot of the photo "memorial" in Weir's episode struck a cord with me, reminding me why what I do as a photojournalist of weddings is important. I am documenting history, family history, for the couple today and for their family and descendants of tomorrow, for their children who have yet to be born, for their nephew who was the ring bearer at age six who now has a family of his own. Maybe their format has changed over the years (viewed more now electronically than in print), but photographs still prevail. Often times a box of photos or albums are what people grab if their home is on fire. Photography is such a powerful medium, immortalizing a fraction of a second in time. I document for the moment I am witnessing while actually shooting, but also for the human connection to a photograph after I have taken it. It means a lot to me if the way I see the world moves someone else.
People look at letters reading "3.11 Happiness" made by candles lit by them in front of a temporary shopping complex in the earthquake and tsunami-devastated city of Kesennuma, Iwate Prefecture, northeastern Japan, Sunday, March 11 2012, in an event marking the first anniversary of the massive disaster that devastated Japan's northeast one year ago. (AP Photo / Koji Sasahara) I am frustrated I could not find the shot of the photo "memorials" I refer to from the Nightline episode with Bill Weir that I saw this past Friday night (3/9), so please let me know if anyone else does, so I can post it for proper reference. In the meantime, here are a couple related links I found, one that shows some clips from the Weir episode....
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