Kerry Kilburn Weekly Blog Post 3/21/2016

Mayumi Suzuki website

Mayumi Suzuki video

Mayumi Suzuki, looking toward the former site of her family's photography studio

The ruins of Mayumi's family photography studio

Image taken with uncleaned view-lens camera recovered from the rubble of Mayumi's family's photography studio

One of the families remaining to rebuild Onagawa

Mayumi Suzuki was raised in Onagawa, Japan, a town of around 10,000 people that was devastated by the 11 March, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. She is a third-generation photographer: her grandfather started the family photography studio inherited by her father, and she studied photography at Tokyo University. She was to have inherited the family studio, but it was destroyed in the tsunami that also killed her parents.

When Suzuki returned to Onagawa after the tsunami, originally to search for  her parents, she found that the tile-walled darkroom of her father's studio was still standing. She was ultimately able to recover some of his photographs and equipment; she felt that his equipment and pictures were a message from him that she should continue photography. Consequently, using an uncleaned view camera (that still functioned in spite of being damaged) as well as her own equipment, Suzuki began documenting not only the devastation the tsunami left behind, but the people who were determined to rebuild the town. She said the project helped her to heal.

Aside from the powerful story they tell, I think Suzuki has an excellent eye for composition and color in her color work, and for the potential of black and white in the work she does with her father's old equipment. Those images, in particular, seem well suited to telling the story of a ravaged town because their fuzziness (both in terms of focus and in terms of light) gives them a ghostly feel. I also really appreciate her portraits, which she makes by getting to know her subjects first and working with them - something I really struggle with. She brings her subjects very much to life, no matter what the mood of the image is.