Yuji Hamada

After the Fukushima disaster, Yuji Hamada received a postcard of the Swiss Alps from a friend. Fascinated by the idyllic landscape that contrasted with the brutality that had just hit his native country, he used tinfoil and natural light to reconstitute the alpine atmosphere in his Primal Mountain series. These images were enlarged and placed on rafts floating on the lake, with the panorama that inspired the Japanese artist as a backdrop. The installation, conceived in collaboration with Bachelor students in Industrial Design at ECAL, referred to the barrels of radioactive waste and to the tsunami breakers, bringing viewers to question the ability of the photographic medium to reflect reality faithfully.