Quake aftermath in focus

via CAAI

Friday, 26 November 2010 15:00 Craig Miles

LAST night’s slideshow at the Angkor Photo Festival in Siem Reap presented photos by Jehsong Baak at the FCC Angkor Hotel.

A South Korean who moved to the United States and then to Paris, Baak only photographs at night and says the most interesting aspect of his work is the small amount of light that comes through in his pictures.

“There is a great deal of black in my work,” he says. “I take snapshots from daily life. I try and take ordinary situations and places and transform them into something enigmatic and magical if possible.”

Photos from Baak’s book titled Là ou Ailleurs, (Here or Elsewhere) were shown at the slideshow. Baak says the photos show aspects of his personal life and family background.

Also shown were photos from his new book, which is tentatively named Night After Night, of his stay in Paris since he moved there 12 years ago.

Curator of the slideshows Françoise Callier said Baak’s work was very “arty and beautiful”.

Other photos on show include scenes from the aftermath of the Haiti earthquakes.

The Haiti earthquake on January 12, 2010, caused nearly 250,000 deaths and a huge amount of homelessness. Four different photographers were showcased, all documenting at different stages of the aftermath.

Liu Lung covered the aftermath for homeless people in the weeks following it, while Riccardo Venturi is working on a long-term project, revisiting the island occasionally.

Andrew Berends spent time with 3,000 refugees made homeless in the capital who travelled by ship to Jeremie, along the beautiful Grand Anse River, to start a new life. Benjamin Lowy was in Haiti days after the earthquake to document the immediate aftermath.

Also on display at the slideshow were shots by Luca Zanetti from Switzerland, who documented the Colombian government’s forensic anthropology team looking for more than 25,000 people missing after the nation’s 45-year-old civil war.

Photos by American photographer Paula Bronstein rounded out the evening, documenting Mongolia’s worst winter in over 30 years. More than two million head of livestock perished, with many people resorting to live in sewers due to a lack of homeless shelters, to survive outside temperatures of -25C.