ABSTRACT
The natural and human-made disasters of 311 (the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns in Northeast Japan’s Tōhoku region on March 11, 2011) resulted in a proliferation of professional and amateur images documenting the catastrophe, and instigated a widespread investigation of the formal and social capacities of still and moving pictures. Surveying post-311 visual culture, this chapter argues for a transmedia approach to understanding social crisis amidst environmental collapse, by analyzing a diverse selection of projects in photography, film and video, performance, archiving, and community media to consider how disaster management reveals the mediation of self and environment in Japanese documentary.
