When I was six, a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, and the Fukushima nuclear power plant exploded. My grandparents, who lived near the epicenter, survived in the broken house without electricity and running water for months. I lived in Tokyo, the city that had depended on the energy from Fukushima, experienced intermittent blackouts, and cried out of fear in the dark city that felt suddenly unfamiliar. Energy conservation commercials occupied the television. At my new elementary school, we studied without turning the lights on to conserve energy, and we were scolded if we let the tap run for ten seconds. 

Over the years, we came back to “normal” life. Nobody blames me for leaving a room with the lights and AC on. My memories haunt me, however, asking what was achieved? The urgency of the moment recedes from daily consciousness, but we still face energy problems; we rely on finite, unsecure, and polluting sources without clear solutions, and we keep using energy without much thinking. 

In my project Mining Energy, I use the tricolor separation process: combining three filtered black-and-white photographs to create a single color image. Anything that moves between the three exposures turns into red, green, or blue traces. I apply this technique to photograph power plants and energy consumption. Through layered images, I aim to make energy in everyday actions visible and its toxicity ignored, and our responsibilities to the future generation.