Florian Ruiz

9.0 [inside]

On March 11th 2011: Japan experienced an earthquake of a magnitude of 9.0 bringing on a tsunami which ravaged the northern coasts of the island. 9.0 [inside] shows destroyed interiors of dwellings and the intimacy of people at the time of the drama. In Japan it is not frequent to let people, outside of the inner circle, into one’s home. People live behind closed doors, a preserved refuge from the glances of others. Devastation made access to this static private life possible. The 9.0 [inside] project is to shoot pictures of a reenactment: how the work of people brought life back to affected areas – “brought” or pretended to do so, for the rebirth shared many common points with a play, a stage-designed work.These interior photos thus illustrate the quest for an illusion of life amid mass destruction. I used a pinhole camera (Holga-120wpc) to distort colors and shapes. Such a tool was also appropriate to capture the ghostly, unreal aesthetic of this devastated privacy. Florian Ruiz is a French photographer born in 1972 who has been living in Tokyo since six years. He creates photographic projects in desperate, stained and disillusioned social situations. His work was included in international festival (Angkor Photography Festival, Vendome festival…).Most recently his pictures have been published in the Magazine European Photography, the British Journal of Photography and Photo magazine.


Selected by Emma Morris, Photoworks

http://florianruiz.com/