Kazuma Obara
Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan
Kazuma Obara (Japan, 1985) is a photojournalist based in the UK and Japan. After finishing his degree in sociology at Utsunomiya University, Japan, he studied photojournalism at Days Japan Photo Journalism School while working in the financial industry. After the tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011, he resigned from his job to begin documenting the disaster area, photographing from inside Fukushima Daiichi nuclear cpower plant. Obara was the first photojournalist to convey the story from inside the plant. His work in the disaster areas was published as the photobook Reset Beyond Fukushima, published by Lars Müller Publishers, Switzerland in March 2012.
In 2014, he focused on victims of World War Two in Japan and his self published photobook Silent Histories was shortlisted for Paris Photo/Aperture Photo Book Award and was selected for TIME, Lens Culture, and Telegraph Best Photobook 2014. Continuing his pursuit of nuclear labour issues as a long term project, Obara was focusing on workers at Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In 2015, he studied at London College of Communication Photojournalism and Documentary Photography MA course and got a master’s degree. His project “Exposure" in Chernobyl was selected for World Press Photo 2016 People category 1st prize.
A partner photographer of Swiss photo agency Keystone, his photographs appear regularly in The Guardian, Courier international, ZEIT, El Mund, BBC, CNN, NHK, and DAYS JAPAN.