meisai lee's photostream  

In June 2011 I had the opportunity to travel with a small Japanese team that had been helping since the beginning (and still are), they were there just a few days after the disaster. Taking fuel and supplies, counselling and helping people throughout the affected areas. We travelled along the entire coastline where the tsunami had struck, zig zagging inland when the roads were blocked. We visited Ishinomaki, Minami Sanriku, Kesennuma and other areas in-between.
At the time I took the photographs there was a lot of information out there about the disaster, I published one picture, but it felt wrong in some ways to add to what was already media saturation, my photographs were not really making people more aware of the situation. I needed time away from the images to fully appreciate them also, I think I made the right choice. Coming back to them almost a year later I see them differently now, and it feels like the right time to remind people about the scale of the disaster and that there is still so much to be done, people in Japan don't want the world to forget.