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I love photography.
But I'm not really interested
in a picture.
There's a difference between
pictures of something and
pictures about something.
And I wanted to make pictures
about something.
Because I really am interested
in this idea of science being
our Achilles' heel.
[SPEAKING JAPANESE]
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A friend of mine sent
me an email.
And it was a really
dark email.
And I was kind of in a dark
place then, a few weeks ago.
Things were not good.
I picked up my phone.
And it said, it looks like
our terrible world
is revealing itself.
And then I started reading it.
And I'm like, holy shit.
This is hugely significant.
So there was definitely a
compelling urge to do this.
And I thought, if I do not go
do this, I should just leave
photography now.
When I was about 14 years old,
my dad bought me a camera.
It was a Yashica.
I'm not sure why he got me the
camera, maybe as a birthday
present or something.
I don't really remember.
But I do remember that I
loved it when I first
grabbed that camera.
At the same time, I think
magazines were probably in
their peak.
I mean, everybody talks about
a golden age of magazines.
But for me, it was really the
late '80s, early '90s.
And as a kid, my family, they
subscribed to "Time,"
"Newsweek," all the usual
news weeklies.
And I remember opening up, and
these big huge photographs.
And that was the first
time where it
started connecting events.
This idea of history being
created or made, and then the
idea that somebody actually
has to go out there and
discuss what this history is.
I started working.
I got a summer job at a tabloid,
the "Toronto Sun." I
worked there for four months.
All my friends were kind of
turning their noses, oh, how
could you work "The Sun?" You
know, it's a tabloid.
But it was the best--
one of the greatest
experiences of my life.
It was four months.
I had never, ever, ever,
made any money
of photography before.
And this idea of getting
paid for it was really
exhilarating.
And then I kind of had this
brainstorm that, wow, there
are other newspapers and
magazines in the world.
And I ended up working a lot for
"The New York Times," and
for some German publications,
which was great.
So at first, when I started at
"The Globe," it was Toronto
and sort of area.
And then as I got more
experience and more clients,
it was all across the country.
My interest in Russia
begins, I guess--
yeah, I was 12 years old.
Because I had pneumonia.
I was bed-ridden for
three, four months.
The only thing I could do
was listen to the radio.
And I remember early May
of '86 lying in my bed.
And there was a news report that
came on about this place
called Chernobyl and a massive
nuclear accident.
So since then, I got kind
of fascinated, I guess.
And I had met some police
officers in a small town.
And I had met, like--
I don't want to them
Mafia guys--
ex-mobsters, but still
criminals.
This was a very focused
project.
I went out with the cops.
And they were doing
their raids.
And I would hang out with
the criminals and such.
And at that time, then the work
kind of split off into
two tangents.
One was this idea of power and
the acquisition of power.
But then also, out of my,
again, trying to save my
childhood curiosity,
was Chernobyl.
Everybody thinks Chernobyl is
three-headed babies, and
monsters, and mutant catfish,
and such like that.
And when I got up there, I was
really pleasantly surprised
that it had completely smashed
any expectation that I had.
And that's when I knew, that OK,
I've got to come back and
photograph Chernobyl.
There was a man I met named
Nikolai who said, oh, come
into my home, and
we drink vodka.
And it was one of my first
sort of experiences in a
traditional Ukrainian village.
And the whole custom of meeting
somebody and being
invited to the house.
And his friend Victor came over,
Victor Popovichenko, who
I ended up photographing
a few months later.
And that photograph I guess was
my key moment where things
changed for me.
I had one of--
well, press for that, he's
falling over, trying to catch
his vodka and stuff.
And that was when the
seed was planted.
OK, I'm going to Chernobyl.
But I wanted to Chernobyl in
winter, so I waited about
eight, nine months.
And I went back for three months
in the winter of 2006.
And I had lived up in Chernobyl,
close to the zone.
And I just spent all
my time up there
photographing that project.
Since then, I just have
kept going back.
Well I've been into the zone
probably 15, 20 times, but
I've probably been to the
Chernobyl region itself, I
don't know, 30 times or
something like that.
It's just something that
I kind of love now.
I always tell my friends I want
to get a second home.
And it's going to
be in Chernobyl.
It's quite beautiful,
actually.
This is one of my first projects
where I started
questioning the way I work, and
what I'm working on, and
why I'm working on it.
What kind of photography
do I want to do?
And that's what Russia kind
of allowed me to do.
I'm trying to explore
different ways
to talk about this--
an atomic world that we've
decided to live in.
So when Japan happened, and
Fukushima especially, I
thought, I have to go.
Because it's almost
mirroring what's
happened with Chernobyl.
That is why I'm sitting
here in Japan now.
Which is a place that I kind
of wanted to come to.
But I never really thought I
would end up here so quickly.
But obviously, with what's been
happening in the last
three weeks with Fukushima and
the nuclear reactor, I just
felt that OK, I need to go.
And I see Tokyo now as the
city of the archetypal,
apocalyptic city.
It's the perfect place
for the world to end.
The first thing I did
notice was about the
lights, that it is dark.
And this idea of the
electricity.
And then, of course, the reason
the electricity is at,
I think, what did they say, 60%
capacity, is because of
what's happening with Fukushima,
which is the main
power source for Tokyo.
So Tokyo relies upon what's
happening in Fukushima.
And what's happening Fukushima
is not helping the
situation in Tokyo.
When I told people and said,
I'm going to Japan and I'm
going to do a story about the
exclusion zone and what's
happening there, I just knew.
I knew what I was going to find
because I had had that
experience in Chernobyl
and Zholtye Vody.
And I kind of know about these
wastelands which are forgotten.
And it actually did meet
every expectation.
But it also completely
spooked me.
You start seeing the actual
destruction of the earthquake
and the tsunami.
I mean, that's the really
interesting thing about
Fukushima, I think, is it wasn't
just an earthquake.
It wasn't just a tsunami.
But now on top it, on a third
layer, they've got this
nuclear catastrophe.
That was the other weird thing
is that there was no police,
no Japanese defense forces.
In Minamisoma, they had the
city hall building.
There was people there testing
for radiation.
And the only military that
was there was the
guy parking the cars.
It was actually a pretty
normal city.
I was writing an email
to my friend.
I said, picture your
neighborhood in Toronto.
And I just said-- called you
right now, leave right now.
Run.
How did you leave
your apartment?
Is your television set on?
Were you eating dinner?
What we're doing?
And that's exactly what I sensed
in Odaka, that people
just suddenly left.
Windows open, the curtains
blowing in the breeze.
Going into people's homes,
especially that one home with
the bowl of oranges just sitting
on the table and such.
If people are really planning
to never come back to their
home, I think they're going to
take that bowl of oranges and
probably throw them out, or
put it away, or clean out
their fridge, or something
like that.
I think if you're given a week
to leave your home, you're
going to make your home in
a state that is never
returnable.
Complete annihilation.
Just this, shoo.
Like somebody took a chessboard
and just through
all the pieces aside.
And the silence and the
stillness was something that
I've only ever heard
in Chernobyl.
So I've only heard
that two times.
I just really think we we're
the only people--
no, I know we were the only
people to tell that story.
To go to exclusion zone and
to actually see what
the reality is there.
And ironically enough, I had
read a report yesterday on CNN
saying there are bodies, yes,
there are bodies still in the
exclusion zone.
But the bodies that are left
are ones we can't get to
because they're inside.
And it's a radioactive thing.
But we've cleaned.
There are no bodies
on the streets.
And we had specifically
seen a body in Odaka.
And if we've seen one, there's
definitely more.
Because it was pretty much, not
in plain sight, but all
you had to do was walk 30
seconds off the main street,
and there was a body.
Wow.
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I've always had an understanding
of who I am as a
photographer, what I'm
trying to say.
And I've always seen my
career as a body.
Everything--
it might take me 20 years to
finally tell the entire
project that I want to tell.
I mean, I always try to be
consistent with my work and
develop it, but also
maintain its basic
structure, its premise.
And then that's going back to
our statement about what a
novelist does.
You really have to look at a
nuance and subtlety, and maybe
use allegory or a metaphor
to get across a story.
You know, you see people on the
street, please give money.
Or if you want to help the
tsunami relief, this is what
you can do.
But I have an idea, a feeling
that people just don't really
understand.
They're not grasping the whole
scope of the potentiality.
I think with the earthquake
and tsunami, yeah it was a
catastrophe.
But you know, it's an
engineering catastrophe.
We can fix this.
But you can't fix what's
happening in Fukushima.
