Another fearmongering article. EDIT: Google Images finds photos from James Galbraith who took them in early 2018 or earlier, not "8 years on" in the same locations. At first I thought the OP author just took his images and put them on the site with his watermark, but now I think he just took the same tour of exclusion zone and was shown the same carefully preserved locations. Either way it's unfair to characterise the entire "Fukushima" by a few locations specifically preserved to show tsunami/earthquake damage.
The photographs are stolen and uncredited from James Galbraith who took them in early 2018 or earlier, not "8 years on".
That's a very serious claim to make especially considering the author is a professional photographer. I don't see any indication these are stolen, it's just the same subject matter[1]. Maybe you shouldn't run around slandering people without offering proof?
I was curious so I tried to match the two photos. They're clearly taken at the same location, but from slightly different angles. The shadow is different too.
I remembered seeing the same images a year ago, so I used Google Images to find what I assumed to be the same images. I didn't know the OP is a photographer, I assumed it was just another clickbait blog, as is common these days. I updated my original post to remove the accusation.
Photo Stealer Police
16 maja, 2019 at 12:04 pm
These photos are stolen and uncredited from James Galbraith who took them in early 2018, if not earlier.
Did you write this on the photographer's web site?
In your link there is a photo of what looks to me like a school hall that could very easily be a cropped and color changed version of a photo included in the OP (/vice-versa).
It is amazing that both photographers took the same photos from almost the same location... but if you look closely the photo in the "photo essay" was actually taken from a slightly higher position. For example, you can see that the upper corners of the retracted basketball board overlap with the girders in one photo, but not in the other.
Ugh... shame on you. Where is the fearmongering? And no, the photos were not stolen.
The photographer has visited Fukushima on several occasions, you can see that on the rest of his site, and he appears himself on some of the earlier pictures.
The fearmongering is in the choice of the photos. The locations in the photos are not open to the public, you can only see them on a special tour of exclusion zone. They're preserved for posterity to show earthquake damage. The photographer is implying that it's how the life is now in the affected areas. He's not showing photos of the rebuilt Tomioka station, newly built J-Village station and reconstructed J-Village, the newly built hospital, school, kindergarten (opened this year), Sakura Mall Tomioka or anything that actually has to do with the life of people in this town. And I also visited this area in 2017 and have a bunch of pictures of destroyed buildings, but I'm not going around pretending that's all there is to look at.
"The efforts of thousands of workers and billions of dollars spent on decontaminating the contaminated areas are beginning to bear fruit."
This is hardly fearmongering.
Also from the article:
"That is why it’s important to document the consequences of a nuclear disaster. Many of the devastated, abandoned and contaminated buildings and interiors I have photographed no longer exist. They have been cleaned and restored or demolished. This is obviously right and necessary. My task, however, is different. I want to preserve as many testaments to the nuclear disaster and human tragedy as possible. Despite eight years having passed, there is still a huge number here, particularly in the red zones — the most radioactive ones that are still closed and where residents are not allowed to return. Although I could be wrong, there is no indication they ever will. Let them serve as a warning to future generation so they do not forget what the careless handling of nuclear energy can lead to."
This seems very right and proper. The author does not criticize nuclear energy as such. His aim was to "document the consequences", he has done so diligently and without "fearmongering". I am actually pro nuclear energy, but if you object to this - you are unreasonably complacent.
I myself downvoted it, a thing that I very rarely do on this website (at most twice a year, and I've been in here for quite some time). I hope others do the same.
How about these pictures from April 2019 instead? https://tokuhain.arukikata.co.jp/fukushima/2019/04/post_169....