Mohamad Iqbal gives tsunami victims a face

Mohamad Iqbal gives tsunami victims a face

Christina Schott, Contributor, Jakarta

A hundred thirty-thousand dead, 40,000 missing, half a million
homeless -- the tsunami in Aceh produced such unimaginable
numbers of victims that many remain anonymous; part of an
inconceivable statistic.

And despite all the coverage, it was seldom that TV pictures
of the horror, advertisement-style packages with emotional music,
delved into the personal tragedies. Frequently we heard an
announcer say "He lost everything". Far more rarely, however, did
we get to know or feel what this "everything" actually meant. The
victims became the objects, not the subjects, of the disaster.

But, as photographer Mohamad Iqbal's well-researched photo
exhibition shows, the tsunami survivors have feelings and
thoughts; fear of the past and hope for the future. All of which
they express in their faces.

Faces of the Survivors is the title of Iqbal's very personal
quest on show at the Goethe Institute Jakarta and presented in
cooperation with the Antara Photo Journalism Gallery.

The 26 portraits show Acehnese people telling their stories
without words, by presenting what is left in their lives.

For five weeks, Iqbal traveled down the west coast of Aceh
looking for people who were willing to tell him their stories and
to pose in front of his lens.

"It was a very emotional work experience. Every single photo
is the documentation of a personal tragedy that I had to learn
first, before I could set the picture in the right context," the
photographer said.

Seven-year-old Delisa and her father, Bahtiar, from the town
of Lambaro, are the only two members of their family who survived
the tsunami.

Iqbal met them for the first time in January, when the
60-year-old father was rushing out of the military's Kesdam
Hospital carrying his daughter, who just had her left leg
amputated. The pair were fleeing with other patients because they
had heard rumors about another tsunami.

When Iqbal returned to Aceh for the Faces project, he was
surprised and touched to find them again by accident. He asked
Delisa, what he could do for her. All she said she wanted was ice
cream and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

In the picture telling this story, father and daughter are
posing in front of a wooden shack -- their home now -- the girl
smiling with a pocket radio balancing on her one leg, protected
by her father's arm.

When so much of one's life has been obliterated by a disaster;
so many loved ones taken away; possessions become highly
significant. Nineteen-year-old Vera Siska presents herself with
the remnants of her soft toy collection. The student of Syiah
Kuala University spent days searching the neighborhood for her
hundreds of dolls that had been washed away.

Eventually she found one here and another there among the
debris. She washed each of them and dried them carefully. In the
picture, she is leaning back on a clothes line with widespread
arms. She wears a a T-shirt emblazoned with the U.S. flag as an
Indonesian banner flaps in the background; the image becomes the
almost surrealistic statement of a personal struggle to recover
one's identity and a "normal" life.

"The choice of portraiture is the consideration of portrayed
subjects. In portraiture, everyone composes themselves in front
of the public, it is the presentation of an individual in the
world," curator Alexander Supartono said.

Often in a chaotic and disastrous situation, a photographer
takes scenes without the knowlege of the subjects, a situation
that tends to objectify people in the search for a larger
narrative.

However in Faces, Iqbal personally introduced himself to his
subjects and had to convince them to pose for his medium-format
camera. The wasteland of the tsunami became his studio, populated
by his subjects and their few recovered possessions.

Ibqal did not push his subjects for an emotional response and
many keep their distance, showing either an uncertain smile or
the traditional serious expression Indonesians reserve for formal
photos.

There are however, surprises -- like the old school teacher
sitting in her courtyard who had complained about the recovery
situation. In the photograph her resigned eyes do most of the
talking.

With an almost obsessive wish for completeness, impossible to
fulfill, Iqbal extended his stay in Aceh twice. He traveled from
Banda Aceh through Aceh Besar, took a boat to Calang and Lamno
and finally went by motorbike to Meulaboh, where he was stopped
by the Indonesian Military from entering the city.

In other places, the long-haired 33-year-old Jakartan was
suspected of being an agent of the Indonesian intelligence.
Another time, a woman broke down in tears when she saw Iqbal
because he reminded her of her own missing son.

The photographer fought his way through a difficult situation,
sleeping in emergency tents, eating instant noodles and using
whatever sanitary facilities were available; sometimes the open
sea.

"In the beginning, I thought I would not be able to portray
people who have had such traumatic experiences. By overcoming
this, this journey will have a strong influence on my future
work. I have learned so much respect for the Acehnese people --
they are very strong, accepting their fate as it is and trying to
start all over again," he said.

Iqbal mentions Sunyoto, the owner of a coffee shop in one of
the hardest-hit shopping centers in Banda Aceh. Although nobody
else had returned to the destroyed area, the 52-year-old, who had
lost his wife and house in the waves, began cleaning up the
debris and reconstructing his shop.

Or Karmilawati and Syamsul, who met in a refugee camp in Mata
Ie, fell in love and got married, starting a new life in the
middle of the rubble. The couple, whose pictures were shown in
almost all of the Indonesian newspapers, put on their wedding
costumes for Iqbal to tell their story.

Faces of the Survivors (Raut Pusaran, Raut Hayat) photo
exhibition by Mohamad Iqbal at Goethe Institute Jakarta,
Jl. Sam Ratulangi 11-15, Menteng, Central Jakarta from April 14
until May 14.