Tsunami: A Magnum Photo Gallery
As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It’s a trace.
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
A year and three days ago, the word “Tsunami” entered the public vocabulary. “Tsunami”, which prior to the disaster few could have pronounced or defined, is now an indelible for a disaster of unimaginable proportions. While the final death toll may never be known, reliable estimates have it at about 216,000 people. Almost a quarter-million people simply ceased to exist in a relative blink of an eye. I don’t imagine there is any way that any of us who were not there could begin to understand the scope, the devastation, and the sheer destructive power.
That this disaster took place in one of the poorest parts of the world only amplifies the suffereing and the task of rebuilding. Two years…ten years later…will things ever be the same?
