Meg Hewitt was born in 1973 in Sydney, Australia and formally studied sculpture, painting and temporal media.
She took up photography in 2010 and has since been selected as a finalist in the Moran Prize for Contemporary Photography, the Head On Prize, the LensCulture Street Photography Awards, and the Maggie Diaz Photography Prize for Women. She has also been awarded a gold medal in the 2018 Tokyo International Foto Competition and a silver medal in the 2016 Prix de la Photographie, Paris.
In 2017 she was named fringe artist of the year at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale and highly commended in the Australian Photobook of the Year awards for her monograph ‘Tokyo is Yours’.
Her visual style is inspired by film noir, manga, printmaking and early Japanese photography magazines.
Meg is a member of Australian collective Oculi and international collective UP Photographers.
Tokyo is Yours
My series Tokyo is Yours was recently exhibited at Chaussee 36 Photo Foundation in Berlin. This followed an exhibition at Anne Clergue Gallery in 2019 during Rencontres Arles. This series examines life in Tokyo at the time of the Tohoku - Great East Earthquake, Tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
As a child, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster had terrified and fascinated me. I imagined the landscape engulfed by a storm of nuclear fallout. In Japan the triple disaster was so powerful and yet the government had declared most of the small country still safe. Was it to be believed?
Unable to travel to Japan immediately after the disaster I watched from afar as news channels predicted the fallout spreading across the Pacific Ocean. The footage of the 40 metre high Tsunami rolling inland across the coast following the 9.1 undersea megathrust earthquake was beyond comprehension.
A ladder traverses its face as a potential means of escape. Image Meg Hewitt
I wondered what it felt like to be in Tokyo as sometimes these big cities feel like a bubble. Tokyo is just 3 hours by car from the Power Plant, around 240km. Surely it was dangerous to stay even there, surely things had changed.
In 2015 I travelled to Tokyo to ask people how they had felt at the time. No power, trains, phone reception. They recalled where they were at the time and feeling unsure of where was safe. People remembered the buildings going up and down not just side to side as in regular quakes. I imagined life as it was playing out at that moment in time, lovers by the river, animals in zoos.
The nature and the scale of the meltdown were not communicated to the public in the early weeks.
Following the nuclear emergency only 2km surrounding the plant was evacuated. The government eventually increased this to 30km by March 15. The U.S Embassy advised people to leave from with 80km of the plant, Spain advised 120km and Germany advised to leave even the metropolitan area of Tokyo. This depended greatly on the wind direction on the day.
In 2012, ex-prime minister Naoto Kan was interviewed about the Fukushima nuclear disaster, he said that at one point Japan faced a situation where there was a chance that people might not be able to live in the capital zone including Tokyo and would have to evacuate."If things had reached that level, not only would the public have had to face hardships but Japan's very existence would have been in peril"
She is carrying her kimono lovingly like a baby. Image: Meg Hewitt
Meg is currently working on a new series based on Japanese folklore and Shinto/ Buddhist beliefs.
She runs workshops in Japan every April and November, alternating between Tokyo and Kyoto. You can purchase tickets, or find out more information here.
UNITED states
Since 2017 I have been working on a series about the ‘United’ States
When I first travelled to the United States, my mind was filled with the images from the TV sitcoms of my youth—stories where everyone is predominantly middle class, living happy lives with minor dramas that simply advance the plot. In this fictionalised reality, family is central, people have enough to eat, and harmony is often portrayed between black and white communities.
However, the reality I encountered was starkly different. The United States, in the 21st century, feels divided—at war with itself. The cracks between class, race, and privilege are deep and undeniable. A single accident or illness can condemn someone to a lifetime of poverty. Veterans who fought for their country sleep on the streets in cardboard boxes. In one of the richest nations in the world, the safety net is almost non existent. And with the changing political landscape, the country stands at a critical turning point in its history.
I’ve been creating a photographic series that seeks to explore and understand how America arrived at this point. The ‘post-truth’ era. This series will eventually also culminate in a book and exhibitions.
to give yourself a more Instagram-able booty. Image: Meg Hewitt
You can help Meg fund the creation of this series by purchasing one of her handmade postcards. Each postcard is unique, with a photographic print. They are individually handwritten, signed, and numbered. This is a way for you to own a piece of the journey while directly supporting the development of the project.
