By now, everyone would have seen Malaysian photographer Keow Wee Loong’s insane pictures inside the Fukushima Exclusion Zone.
In fact, his pictures have attracted so much attention, another photographer has come out to call his bluff.
Polish photographer Arkadiusz Podniesiński posted a note titled ‘Attention Seeking Kid – Keow Wee Loong’ on his website, accusing Keow of lying about his photos in search of fame.
“His story is almost completely fabricated,” Podniesiński wrote. “His entire text is dishonest, his trip to the no-go zones untrue and the photographs were taken in areas that everyone can access.”
According to Podniesiński — who claimed that he had visited Fukushima a few times after the nuclear disaster in 2011 — Keow had taken most of his pictures in the easily-accessible and absolutely legal Green Zone.
“I have visited Fukushima many times to document the destruction caused by the disaster at the nuclear power plant, and so I did not have any major problems identifying the sites where Keow Wee Loong took his photographs.
“All of these places are open and accessible to all,” he said on his website.
The reason he wrote the note, according to Podniesiński, was to educate the public about the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear disaster.
“I have devoted the last 8 years to the subject of Chernobyl (I have been there dozens of times), as well as with the subject of Fukushima from the moment the disaster in Japan happened (I have visited 4 times in the past year, spending more than a month in total there).
“During this time, I have seen the effects of nuclear disasters enough to be opposed to this form of energy production.”
Podniesiński felt that Keow’s photos create a false picture of the situation in Fukushima — which was permanently shut down after three nuclear reactor meltdowns due to a magnitude 9.0 earthquake which struck Tōhoku in March 2011 — and that is unfair to nearly 100,000 evacuees as the catastrophe is still fresh and painful.
