“Don’t matter/My eyes have seen/For better/Out of blue comes green”

This line from the first record I ever bought remained in my heart for a long time.

After I grew up, as I faced events and environments I couldn’t handle on my own, I began to take photographs on my favorite forests and ponds in the place where I was born. In the hope that this landscape would head, even if only slightly, in a better direction, from blue to green.

The location, Goshikinuma, or the Five-Colored Ponds, in the collective name for a group of lakes and ponds in Urabandai, Fukushima prefecture.

In 1888, a phreatic explosion on the Mount Bandai triggered a debris avalanche.

Rivers were dammed, and hundreds of ponds were formed. Due to the properties of the volcanic minerals, vegetation and algae present in the water. Each of the ponds appears a different color, such as blue, green or red. The eruption was the first major natural disaster in japan since the contry’s modernization in the Meiji period. Five villages and eleven smaller settlements were flooded or buried, resulting in 477deaths.To this day, this history lies buried at the bottom of the same ponds that produce to these beautiful colors.

「物事が良い方向へ向かって行けば　突然緑があらわれる」         

初めて買ったレコードの一節がずっと心に残っていた                 

大人になって　自分ではどうしようもない出来事や環境と向き合う中で

一番好きな故郷の森と沼の写真を撮った                                  

青から緑へ　その風景に少しでもいい方向に向かってほしいと願いを込めて

撮影地の五色沼は福島県裏磐梯にある湖沼群の総称である            

1888年　磐梯山の水蒸気爆発によって岩屑なだれが起こり          

川が堰き止められ数百の沼が形成された                                  

流入している火山性鉱物、植物、藻の性質により                       

青　緑　赤など沼ごとに様々な色にみえる                               

噴火は明治以降の近代になってからは日本初の大災害で

５村１１集落が埋水没　４７７人もの死者を出した                    

美しい色彩が生まれた沼の底には現在もこのような歴史が眠っているのである

 Copyright Ⓒ 2013-2023 Akemi Ohara All rights reserved.