It was March 11, 2011, when the Japanese region of Tōhoku was hit first by an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 and then by a tsunami that caused the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima power plant.
Just after the accident, the inhabitants of the cities of Natie and Iitate were forced to evacuate and move away from their homes. For many years these places remained completely displaced, until two years ago, when the Japanese government slowly began to reduce the exclusion zones and invested financially in the physical and economic reconstruction of these areas.
Despite this, very few people have actually had the courage to return to their homes, leaving some areas still totally uninhabited.
This is the scenario that attracted the English photographer Giles Price, who has always examined man’s impact on the environment through his work, and which led him to create Restricted Residence.
This photographic project is a collection of shots taken with the thermal technology usually used in the medical field or in surveys. The result is almost surreal photographs showing landscapes and people returned to the exclusion zones.

All the shots of Restricted Residence have been collected in a book of the same name and accompanied by an essay by Fred Pearce, an environmentalist writer. Giles Price gives back the atmosphere and the tensions present in a place that has experienced a nuclear disaster trying to question the viewer not only about the extent of the impact of nature on the man but also what man has on nature.
The book Restricted Residence is published by Loose Joints.
© Giles Price 2020 courtesy Loose Joints © Giles Price 2020 courtesy Loose Joints
© Giles Price 2020 courtesy Loose Joints © Giles Price 2020 courtesy Loose Joints