Edition 2017
WINNERS NEW DISCOVERY AWARD 2017
Carlos Ayesta & Guillaume Bression
Retracing Our Steps, Fukushima Exclusion Zone – 2011-2016
Le 247, Paris, France
Carlos Ayesta and Guillaume Bression rushed to Fukushima after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. To see for themselves. To bear witness. They photographed not to testify but by necessity, because they could not believe their eyes, and that—the unbelievable magnitude of the devastation—turned their amazement into a project. An atypical project deeply linked to the role of a certain kind of documentary photography expected not to tell the truth, but to offer a form of operational neutrality by which photographers situate and express themselves. The show can be split up into a series of repeated perspectives, ever-different angles of analysis and proposals that might seem contradictory, in order to probe a situation as thoroughly as possible, including what is non-visible and non-visual.
Christian Caujolle
Carlos Ayesta and Guillaume Bression rushed to Fukushima after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. To see for themselves. To bear witness. They photographed not to testify but by necessity, because they could not believe their eyes, and that—the unbelievable magnitude of the devastation—turned their amazement into a project. An atypical project deeply linked to the role of a certain kind of documentary photography expected not to tell the truth, but to offer a form of operational neutrality by which photographers situate and express themselves. The show can be split up into a series of repeated perspectives, ever-different angles of analysis and proposals that might seem contradictory, in order to probe a situation as thoroughly as possible, including what is non-visible and non-visual.
Christian Caujolle
Exhibition curator: Christian Caujolle.
Publication: Retracing Our Steps. Fukushima Exclusion Zone – 2011-2016, Kehrer Verlag, 2016.
Prints and framing by PCP Photographie, Paris.