Yamakawa Shintaro: Thank you and Hello.
For The Illuminator.
On May 2nd 2008 Cyclone Nargis swept through Burma, taking the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The aftermath left survivors homeless, without food and at serious threat from water borne diseases. Burma, then under military rule (which was dissolved in 2011), resisted international help and supplies were held in Thailand as the Junta refused to issue visas to aid workers. 18 days after the cyclone hit, only a quarter of those in need had received aid yet the government’s focus remained on the upcoming military constitution referendum as opposed to the care of its people.
May 17th was a global day of action for Burma’s Cyclone Victims. In London, people gathered in protest outside the French and US Embassies and the British Foreign Office. The protesters appealed to the UK and the US to help Burma, despite the Junta’s resistance. Many of the protesters were accompanied by placards, the images on which depicted homeless families, hiding under makeshift roofs, their brows furrowed with despair; bloated bodies floating face down in muddy pools or faces wrought with desperation, waist deep in water with their hands stretched towards the lens, desperate for escape.
It was these placards that inspired Yamakawa Shintaro to create the series of works entitled Thank you and Hello. He uses the pieces as a vehicle through which to express his anger at the exploitation of the images. The subjects of the photographs are stripped of their dignity for the world to look on with apathetic eyes, so used to the sensational images which litter our screens and newspapers. In his works Shintaro juxtaposes the images of death and desolation against the most banal, and overused words: hello and thank you. In this way he reminds us that for some, this desolation was the everyday. Aware of the double standards present, as he too uses these images to express his own personal beliefs, he tells The Illuminator of how he uses the photographs deliberately in order to feel empathy. He encourages the viewer to engage with the story behind the image, the person behind the portrait, urging us to untether ourselves from ‘the shackles of the everyday’ so that the placards transcend their status as just ‘pictures on a stick’ and become reality.
On May 2nd 2008 Cyclone Nargis swept through Burma, taking the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The aftermath left survivors homeless, without food and at serious threat from water borne diseases. Burma, then under military rule (which was dissolved in 2011), resisted international help and supplies were held in Thailand as the Junta refused to issue visas to aid workers. 18 days after the cyclone hit, only a quarter of those in need had received aid yet the government’s focus remained on the upcoming military constitution referendum as opposed to the care of its people.
May 17th was a global day of action for Burma’s Cyclone Victims. In London, people gathered in protest outside the French and US Embassies and the British Foreign Office. The protesters appealed to the UK and the US to help Burma, despite the Junta’s resistance. Many of the protesters were accompanied by placards, the images on which depicted homeless families, hiding under makeshift roofs, their brows furrowed with despair; bloated bodies floating face down in muddy pools or faces wrought with desperation, waist deep in water with their hands stretched towards the lens, desperate for escape.
It was these placards that inspired Yamakawa Shintaro to create the series of works entitled Thank you and Hello. He uses the pieces as a vehicle through which to express his anger at the exploitation of the images. The subjects of the photographs are stripped of their dignity for the world to look on with apathetic eyes, so used to the sensational images which litter our screens and newspapers. In his works Shintaro juxtaposes the images of death and desolation against the most banal, and overused words: hello and thank you. In this way he reminds us that for some, this desolation was the everyday. Aware of the double standards present, as he too uses these images to express his own personal beliefs, he tells The Illuminator of how he uses the photographs deliberately in order to feel empathy. He encourages the viewer to engage with the story behind the image, the person behind the portrait, urging us to untether ourselves from ‘the shackles of the everyday’ so that the placards transcend their status as just ‘pictures on a stick’ and become reality.
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