Interview with Pengkuei Ben Huang. Letters to those taken away by the Great Tsunami
In the afternoon of March 11, around ten years ago, the East coast of Japan was hit by one of the strongest earthquakes in the country’s modern history.
The Tōhoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami, also known as the East Japan Great Earthquake, caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, wrecked the fates of thousands and took countless lives.
Years after the tragedy, Pengkuei Ben Huang began to regularly visit the region in order to photographically cover the aftermath. Being emerged into the life of local communities, the photographer goes far beyond the visible effects of the disaster. The story created as a result of this is embodied in his project Soul Calling.
Ben Huang is a Taiwanese-Canadian photographer who takes interest in visual narratives which explore the relationship between humans and their surrounding environments.
Zak Dimitrov speaks to Ben Huang about the project:
Zak Dimitrov: I wanted to start off by asking how you find out about the stories that you’d want to document — word of mouth, newspaper, or something else?
Ben Huang: I’ve been visiting the region on an annual basis since 2012, roughly a year and a half after the earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan. At first, I was only there to document the recovery. Over time, I was asked to assist a traditional summer festival in one of the towns I visited. Through that opportunity I was able to learn more details about how the disaster has affected the region beyond its physical scars. Perhaps stories I’ve done have a deep connection with conversations I had with individuals I’ve connected in some way.
ZD: Do you find that documenting difficult subjects associated with grief has an impact on you as a photographer and generally as a person? I’d imagine it’s hard to switch off after you’ve been capturing something traumatic for days or months.
BH: It was quite difficult for many years. Particularly so when you’re forming a personal relationship with some of the subjects you’re photographing. I guess I found my peace after seeing one of the survivor’s children being born in 2018 at the local hospital and the joy reflected on their faces. Perhaps it was then I felt deeply about the circle of life and how healing can be multifaceted.
ZD: Tell us more about your interest in the relationship of text and image and how the translation works? Did you ever think of presenting it as just the English translation or was it important to keep the originality of the letters?
BH: There is a facility in the city of Rikuzentakata, one of the towns that was nearly wiped out after the 2011 tsunami. This place housed letters written by survivors to the victims of the disaster. The intention of utilizing the letters is simple: as the region is slowly being rebuilt, memories of the past won’t fade easily among survivors. It is particularly so with trauma. These emotions were evident when I was going through the letters. While translating I could not only feel powerful emotions coming out of words but also sense that these emotions have hindered the ability of writers to put words on a paper. Perhaps that made me decide to present the original along with the translation — so that readers could understand the struggle of overcoming the grievance after losing everything.
ZD: Your last point is very interesting, how it’s palpable that the writers were going through a whirlpool of emotions when writing the letters. Were they written specifically for the project or have they already done it before you approached them?
BH: These letters were written years before I discovered them and the contents of the letters gave a hint. While it is true that letters are meant to be a private communication between the living and loved ones who are no longer in this world, the emotional stage of survivors made these messages less coherent at times. The same emotional stage perhaps also hinders the writer’s ability to make words more readable when they were written. It became a challenge when translating them into English since one has to find a way to make sure the message gets across without altering the original context.
Soul Calling photo book is available at The Phooks
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