Photographer Tarmizi close to tears

Photographer Tarmizi close to tears

A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Facing blood and tears and catching them in pictures are a daily
task for Acehnese photographer Tarmizi Harva, who arrived back in
Lhokseumawe just one day after Aceh was hit by a massive
earthquake and series of tidal waves on Dec. 26.

Tarmizi, who won a World Press Photo Award last year for his
coverage of the Aceh conflict, is now having to take pictures of
bodies lying on the roads and the faces of survivors in refugee
camps.

A week before the calamity, Tarmizi, who works for Reuters,
participated in a photo exhibition at the Antara Photo Journalism
Gallery, Central Jakarta.

His prize-winning photo entitled Woman mourns killed family
member was displayed along with other photos that received World
Press Photo awards in 2004.

The photo of a weeping woman next to the bloodied body of a
male relative tied up to a tree was taken on June 17, 2003.

Even before the earthquake, Aceh had attracted the attention
of journalists due to the prolonged conflict between the
Indonesian Military and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

Now journalists are in the midst of a new kind of
battleground, with thousands of people fighting for their lives.
More than 90,000 people in Aceh were killed and hundreds of
thousands have been left homeless because of the catastrophe.

Decomposed bodies lying on the roads, ruined houses and other
buildings, long queues of refugees waiting for food; these are
the scenes that photojournalists like Tarmizi are currently
capturing.

Getting this news out, however, is a major challenge due to
electricity and telecommunications blackouts.

"It's not much different from being in the middle of an armed
conflict. Tears and bodies," Tarmizi said.

Tarmizi remembers when he took the prize-winning photo on June
17. He was among a group of journalists covering the rescue of
U.S. freelance journalist William Nessen, who had been covering
GAM activities, in Nissam Hill, North Aceh.

Tarmizi got left behind from the group because he was busy
taking pictures. He stopped at a crossroad to ask a local
resident where his group had gone.

The resident told Tarmizi that his group turned left, but
urged him to turn right instead because there was a body at a
nearby farm.

Tarmizi promised the man he would return, then went to find
his colleagues.

He told them about the body but they did not believe him,
saying that there was a lot of false information around,
including mass graves.

"But I was still curious. Isn't our duty as journalists to
check out to see what the truth is?" Tarmizi said in an interview
with The Jakarta Post recently.

Tarmizi returned to the place where he met the resident and
went to the field he had been told about. There he got the
dramatic picture: the half-naked dead man with a weeping woman.

The Amsterdam-based World Press Photo awarded Tarmizi's photo
in the category of "Spot News Singles" and gave him a medallion.

This medallion has strengthened his conviction to continue his
career as a photographer. It has also inspired him and provides
him with the spirit he needs to cover the catastrophes facing his
fellow Acehnese.

Even before the tsunami hit, thousands of people, mostly
civilians, had been killed during the two-decade-long armed
conflict.

The horrific situation was one of the reasons Tarmizi had
originally accepted the offer from Reuters to become a
photographer in Aceh.

"Actually, I was afraid of blood. I could not stand to see
blood. When I was a kid, I never dreamed of being a doctor like
other kids," said Tarmizi, who was born on Jan. 5, 1971 in Medan,
North Sumatra.

This fear of blood made him decide to study civil engineering
at state-run North Sumatra University where he graduated in 1998.

He taught himself photography when he was a university
student. One of his photos even won a prize in the National Sport
Photo Contest in 1997.

Before deciding to be a photographer, the father of two had
once worked in a construction company. He then joined Tempo news
magazine as a photo contributor in Medan in 1999-2000.

He also worked for the Medan Bisnis daily and Gamma news
magazine in 2000-2002 before joining Reuters as stringer in Aceh
in 2002.