Wednesday, January 12

wish you weren't here

Saw this really "good" photo of a ravaged street in Banda Aceh, with what looked like a limb hanging from a barren tree in the foreground.

You can't help but take a closer look. It is actually a damaged mannequin that had been swept from a shop window and deposited there, but somehow it drives home the message more subtly than if had indeed been a body part.

Morbid as it sounds, I think postcards from warzones and disaster areas can be quite impactful. And sell rather well too.

As I was walking past one photog who had just returned from assignment in said disaster zone, it was on the tip of my tongue to ask: "So how was Phuket?"

But decided it sounded too much like he went on vacation there, when it was anything but.

Anyway, my fave photog also came back yesterday and was regaling me -- in his usual goofy manner -- with stories of sleeping in tents filled with Milo water [ie. mud] and newly orphaned kids playing in refugee camps ["See? No parents but still so happy."]

Then, suddenly very serious, he said: "And this is the picture you never saw..."

While they were driving through the totally destroyed town, they went past a woman sitting on the curb with her head in her hands and one lonely battered suitcase beside her.

As they trundled past, he grappled with asking the driver to stop for him to shoot a photo.

He decided, in the end, to leave her to grief in private.

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