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Tohoku: Before and After the Great East Japan Earthquake

This research is the third in a series of photographic works made at the edges of the Earth’s tectonic plates. The resulting photographs combine the scrutiny of catastrophic geological upheaval, within the context of a human-cultural understanding of place and history.

A solo exhibition of photographs from the Tohoku series was shown at the European Geosciences Union Assembly in Vienna in April 2012, with an audience of delegates from the international geoscience research community. The exhibition was accompanied by a lecture presentation as part of the EGU Assembly conference.

Tohoku was originally intended as a further investigation of seismic histories in the Japanese landscape that extended the concerns of the previous series (A Catfish Sleeps). It emerged from Vaughan’s interest in research by Kenji Satake (Earthquake Institute, University of Tokyo) and Brian Atwater (USGS and University of Washington) into an historical tsunami that occurred on the east coast of Japan in 1700.

On 11 March 2011, shortly after Vaughan had returned to Japan, the M9.0 Great Tohoku Earthquake struck the Tohoku region. The resulting tsunami caused immense devastation and loss of life in the same areas of the east coast as the 1700 tsunami. This series of photographs then became an immediate and urgent photographic document, recording the impact of immense geological forces on landscapes and human lives.