Photographer Arai Takashi was born in the late 1970s in the Japan of the Cold War. During his youth he was exposed on a daily basis to representations of nuclear technology in films, anime, manga, and novels. The zeitgeist of the Atomic Age and its inseparable fears of an apocalypse formed the background sentiment of his childhood, while nuclear power plants mushroomed in the Japanese islands under the slogan ‘Atoms for Peace’. The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, followed by the Fukushima nuclear accident, was the first moment when his worst fears seemed to come true after Japan retreated into the amnesia of the bubble and post-bubble economy.
Since he started to make frequent visits to Fukushima, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and other nuclear sites in Japan and the US, he has been considering the complex disparities between the different levels of narrative told by individuals, communities, and nations. Like Svetlana Alexievich (awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature), he asks how we can break out of our shells and expand our imaginations to encompass the invisible, global, and multi-generational threats of nuclear catastrophe.
In this talk moderated by Simon Baker (Director of MEP: Maison Européenne de la Photographie and former Senior Curator, International Art at Tate), Arai will discuss his interdisciplinary approach to nuclear issues utilising the uncertainty of the daguerreotype, one of the earliest photographic techniques, and the instability and fragility of his body and mind as an individual artist.
The Daguerreotype at the End of Our World
18 January 2024
Live event: 1800-1900
Daiwa Foundation
See: https://dajf.org.uk/event/the-daguerreotype-at-the-end-of-our-world
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