Merry Umbrella Project

This is a small selection of 100 umbrellas printed with children's faces from around the world, from a public art project dubbed Merry Umbrella, at the earthquake memorial at Meriken park in Kobe. Larger projects than this one were held in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Okinawa in hopes of spreading messages of peace. The project is the work of Koji Mizutani, who also took the pictures of the children featured on the umbrellas from Mianyang, China, in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, as well as in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, after the 2004 Sumatra earthquake, and in Kobe in the aftermath of the 1995 Hanshin Earthquake.