T H A I L A N D and A C E H
the Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami
(above) the coast of Banda Aceh post Tsunami. 3rd January 2005. The obelisk here can be seen in the North Western most corner of the satellite imagery of the coastal region of the capital on the facing page. Pre and post Tsunami.
Looking for lost relatives. Khao Lak, Thailand 28th December 2004
Sunday afternoon, the second of January 2005. A Garuda flight from Medan to Banda Aceh.
The following morning I set out across a torn bridge, down the road, North West to the coast.
Skeletal remnants of gutted buildings frame tortured landscapes; footprints in muddied, deep relief, baking on both sides of the road between scrap-metaled, brick'n'shard memories of wrecked lives.
Dead, center street, a body on its back, pinned to a table still stood, frozen arms outstretched, resisting a liquid monster. The speed of death is conveyed in the postures of the dead; refusing to bow to their fate. Rigidity. Arms taut in imaginary strangleholds; postures wracked with fear of the inevitable and the thoughts of their loved ones and the sweet words of comfort they will never be able to deliver; words that will die swirling in flooded minds, trapped behind lifeless lips. Secrets to the grave.
What was that last minute like? What went through their minds?
And of the living? What horrors await them?
I encounter a dog, the likes of which I have never seen before. It is in complete shock. I draw level with it. It stays silent, retreating into its skin, shrinking in an effort to make itself unseen, averting its eyes as I pass its peripheries.
The following morning I set out across a torn bridge, down the road, North West to the coast.
Skeletal remnants of gutted buildings frame tortured landscapes; footprints in muddied, deep relief, baking on both sides of the road between scrap-metaled, brick'n'shard memories of wrecked lives.
Dead, center street, a body on its back, pinned to a table still stood, frozen arms outstretched, resisting a liquid monster. The speed of death is conveyed in the postures of the dead; refusing to bow to their fate. Rigidity. Arms taut in imaginary strangleholds; postures wracked with fear of the inevitable and the thoughts of their loved ones and the sweet words of comfort they will never be able to deliver; words that will die swirling in flooded minds, trapped behind lifeless lips. Secrets to the grave.
What was that last minute like? What went through their minds?
And of the living? What horrors await them?
I encounter a dog, the likes of which I have never seen before. It is in complete shock. I draw level with it. It stays silent, retreating into its skin, shrinking in an effort to make itself unseen, averting its eyes as I pass its peripheries.
Banda Aceh. 4th January 2005
Bodies dot the landscape. How to even begin to convey the extent of the madness.
I shoot a square of a boy on his back in the foreground, destruction from there to infinity, then another frame to the right, destruction to infinity and another again to the right of that; destruction to infinity and more destruction.
I shoot a square of a boy on his back in the foreground, destruction from there to infinity, then another frame to the right, destruction to infinity and another again to the right of that; destruction to infinity and more destruction.
Banda Aceh 3rd January 2005
Two men gesture that their homes were destroyed and that they are looking for relatives.They go up the road ahead looking at corpses and opening body-bags.
As I pass them I steal a few frames. The younger man is using a stick to remove the gold ring from a dead woman’s finger. Putrescent flesh slips and a sliver of bone reflects white sun.
I see him again five minutes later, walking through that wasteland, eyes to the ground, lost in every sense; polishing the ring on his finger.
As I pass them I steal a few frames. The younger man is using a stick to remove the gold ring from a dead woman’s finger. Putrescent flesh slips and a sliver of bone reflects white sun.
I see him again five minutes later, walking through that wasteland, eyes to the ground, lost in every sense; polishing the ring on his finger.
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Continuing to the coast, I have the very real and disturbing feeling that I could well be the last person left on the planet.
I embrace this fear as honestly as I can in the hope of coming closer to understanding, as if I ever could, such a feeling of immediate and crushing vulnerability. |
Banda Aceh. 3rd January 2005
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Banda Aceh. 3rd January 2005
The waves that surged here were estimated to have been up to twelve metres high, while on the western coast of Aceh's northernmost tip, the maximum run-up height of the tsunami was measured at a hill between Lhoknga and Leupung and reached more than 30 metres.
It takes a degree of will-power to banish the imaginary wall of liquid death and debris that surges towards me each time my back is turned to the shore. This is the overwhelming feeling that accompanies me for kilometres to the sea and I have to steel myself to resist the urge to spin and face the water. It is this feeling that I know I have to try and capture if I am going to do justice to the departed.
It takes a degree of will-power to banish the imaginary wall of liquid death and debris that surges towards me each time my back is turned to the shore. This is the overwhelming feeling that accompanies me for kilometres to the sea and I have to steel myself to resist the urge to spin and face the water. It is this feeling that I know I have to try and capture if I am going to do justice to the departed.
Leaving the capital behind and headed to the coast. Banda Aceh. 3rd January 2005
A man consoles a woman whom I presume is his wife or sister. Immediately behind them is the concrete foundation of the home where they once lived. On the horizon, is the town center of Banda Aceh. 3rd January 2005
A woman’s wail carries against the wind. I scan the horizon but in her foetal position she is lost in the carnage. I encounter her, sprawled on the ground, as if crushed by the same incredible weight that has flattened her surrounds, pinned down by her emotions, inconsolable. A man’s arms around her and a young boy, silent and expressionless by her side. Her arm flays about pointing sometimes to the site of her home; mud and stinking debris, splintered wood and occasional concrete foundations. Twisted motorcycle frames. Sweet decay. A landscape, rank and void of hope.
That alien vista dwarfs them; time-travellers from happier days, arriving post Armageddon; the sounds of her grief, lost now in the vacuous silence.
That alien vista dwarfs them; time-travellers from happier days, arriving post Armageddon; the sounds of her grief, lost now in the vacuous silence.
Banda Aceh. 3rd January 2005
Plastic bags of potato chips appear every so often, bobbing up and down and pressed up against the paddy banks by the lapping tide. Hungry, I feed off a couple of packets, contents intact; tsunami survivors, until I step, inhaling unguarded, past a body in the mud and gag.
Its face is blackened; its stomach fit to burst.
The rubber mouthpiece of my camelback takes on the flavour of the surrounding decay and I begin to wonder whether perhaps it has dragged through the mire as I have squatted to make a frame. Hydrate.
I start walking back inland, hitching a lift after an hour or so with some Indonesian soldiers, gloved and gas-masked, who are responding to requests to pick up victims from various parts of the city. I finish my day in the failing light at the site of a mass grave and watch as bodies are tossed unceremoniously into the pit. The dead embracing the dead. A joyless orgy eternal.
Its face is blackened; its stomach fit to burst.
The rubber mouthpiece of my camelback takes on the flavour of the surrounding decay and I begin to wonder whether perhaps it has dragged through the mire as I have squatted to make a frame. Hydrate.
I start walking back inland, hitching a lift after an hour or so with some Indonesian soldiers, gloved and gas-masked, who are responding to requests to pick up victims from various parts of the city. I finish my day in the failing light at the site of a mass grave and watch as bodies are tossed unceremoniously into the pit. The dead embracing the dead. A joyless orgy eternal.
Mass Grave. Banda Aceh. 3rd January 2005
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Death was everywhere and had a habit of catching you off-guard even though you thought you are prepared for it. Most of the press corps were billeted at the Governors residence.
Whether it was because it was structurally sound or merely because it was big and central, I do not know. Every time I passed a certain area I would smell it. Death. I narrowed it down to a few pairs of boots and made a point not to inhale whenever I was near them. I wondered whether perhaps they might have been abandoned by someone in a moment of acute discomfort. It is a very hard thing to lose once it is on you, that smell, and I began to pay more attention to people's footwear. Into the night, another violent aftershock. The Governor's floor rolls and flicks me like driftwood trapped on a piece of sea forced into too tight a place. Uprights wobble as if reflected in an indistinct ripple. I engage purposefully with the mosquito-net zip of my Chinese Army (KR) hammock but it's the only thing in the room not highly strung which adds several levels of difficulty to its undoing. That and everyone fleeing the building. It is as if I have parked my body on the starting line of a marathon. Several seconds pass before the commotion dies down and I consider the zip a futile exercise. I look out through the glass walls at everyone stood braced and uncertain, live television looking back at my improbable tomb in fear. I tell myself that the residence was probably very well built and lie back down to sleep. 
An Indonesian soldier holds an injured child, to be placed on a US helicopter and choppered to Banda Aceh for treatment. 4th January 2005
Divers pull a victim from a basement supermarket on the coast road. Phuket.
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Passing a mass grave. Banda Aceh. 4th January 2005
Banda Aceh. 2nd January 2005
US Navy unloading donated supplies. Banda Aceh.
Banda Aceh 3rd January 2005
The temporary morgue at Takua Pa Thailand.
Open coffins at Takua Pa. Thailand.
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Rescue workers retrieving a Tsunami victim's body from an inland body of water. Khao Lak. Thailand.
A child is brought to the airstrip in Banda Aceh for medivac by chopper.
Returning to Banda Aceh almost a year after the catastrophe, I find myself in complete awe of the resilience that permeates the place. How people manage to go on living in the mire and the memories is beyond me, yet at the same time I am acutely aware of the lack of fear now, that was ever-present during the years of brutal Indonesian occupation. It is almost as if the water has washed it away, both the fear and the oppression.
Walking through that ragged, grey landscape, camera in hand, I am approached by Eddie, who invites me to see his 'living-room'. I walk with him along the coast and learn that it is just that; a tent erected on the foundations of his family's former home, the tidal pool lapping at its edge. His wife and child were carried away by the wave. Eddie managed to grab a hold of a house, the only one left standing (pictured below) and hung on to the roof until the waters subsided.
How to sleep in that place with the Ocean's relentless, whispered reminder. Do they come to him in his dreams, tangles of wet and muddied hair hanging over dulled eyes? Does he follow his wife and child's wet footprints through blackness 'til dawn or does he know they are there, just waiting for him to close his eyes, smiling and carefree like in those precious moments before the earth moved.
Walking through that ragged, grey landscape, camera in hand, I am approached by Eddie, who invites me to see his 'living-room'. I walk with him along the coast and learn that it is just that; a tent erected on the foundations of his family's former home, the tidal pool lapping at its edge. His wife and child were carried away by the wave. Eddie managed to grab a hold of a house, the only one left standing (pictured below) and hung on to the roof until the waters subsided.
How to sleep in that place with the Ocean's relentless, whispered reminder. Do they come to him in his dreams, tangles of wet and muddied hair hanging over dulled eyes? Does he follow his wife and child's wet footprints through blackness 'til dawn or does he know they are there, just waiting for him to close his eyes, smiling and carefree like in those precious moments before the earth moved.
Close on one year after the Asian Tsunami, Eddie stands by his temporary dwelling, a tent erected on the concrete foundations of his family's house amidst the Tsunami’s devastation on the coast of Banda Aceh. Near the horizon, one can see the shiny metal roofs of newly constructed dwellings.
Fishermen and their families return to the water for the first time, months after the Tsunami ravaged their lives. Khao Lak, Thailand 2005
Banda Aceh Marketplace. December 2005
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