Talk "From the Frontlines of the Ukrainian War – Boundaries Facing the Roma people"
FREE
2023.4.30
11:00―12:30
Hachiku-an (Former Kawasaki Residence)
Continuing from last year's talk event, photographer and journalist Kazuma Obara will report on the effects of the ongoing chaotic Russian military invasion of Ukraine.
After covering Ukrainian refugees in Poland last March, Obara has been continuously photographing ethnic minorities in Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Moldova, and Poland, who tend to get overlooked among the victims of the Ukrainian war. The Roma people, estimated to number about 10 million in Europe, have suffered persecution and discrimination for centuries. It is estimated that about 400,000 ethnic Roma live in Ukraine, but even those Roma who have escaped the ravages of war face discrimination in their places of refuge, and some are unable to even flee Ukraine because of their stateless status. With the keyword of "BORDER", a complex issue that lies between national borders and ethnic groups, this report focuses on aspects of the war in Ukraine that are rarely seen in the Japanese media.
Speakers
Kazuma Obara (Photographer, Journalist)
Born in Iwate Prefecture in 1985. Photographer and journalist. Obara graduated in photojournalism from University of the Arts, London. Following the Great East Japan earthquake in March 2011, he quit his job at a leasing company and began photographing areas affected by the tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster. He was hired to photograph the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant from the inside, culminating in the publication of the photobook Reset: Beyond Fukushima (Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2012), which documented the Great East Japan earthquake and workers at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Obara subsequently published a series of exposés focusing on individual victims of war and nuclear disasters, including Silent Histories (2014), a history of Japanese child victims of indiscriminate World War II bombings; Exposure / Everlasting (2015), which recorded the long-term effects of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident; and Bikini Diaries (2016), on the 1954 US hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean that exposed Japanese fishermen to radioactive fallout. He has won numerous international awards, including the World Press Photo Award. In 2020, with a grant from the National Geographic Society of the United States, he was continuing to document the efforts of nurses and caregivers working on the front lines of the corona pandemic.
Subway Karasuma or Tozai Lines ""Karasuma Oike"" station, 5 min on foot from Exit 6
Subway Karasuma Line ""Shijo"" station or Hankyu ""Karasuma"" station, 8 min on foot from Exit 22 or 24
