How I came to be an NGO Photographer
It was December 2004. I was in a minivan to Colombo airport after my 3 month Sri Lankan Surf/Self-discovery trip was cut short by the most devastating natural disaster in recent history.
The coastal road was heavily corroded and our minivan full of “survivors” had reached a stand still. A traffic jam. When your very existence is surrounded by death, the last thing you want is be forced to be still. All at once people on the streets began to look panicked. Their pace quickened and soon many were running. Others we’re climbing walls onto balconies. Some we’re yelling.
The driver wouldn’t translate what they were saying, for several long minutes. Over the previous few days I had experienced more sadness than I’d ever imagined possible, which was both numbing and calming. But still, I needed to know what was going on so I insisted that the driver tell us what was happening.
In the rear view mirror, I caught a glimpse of restrained fear in his eyes. “They have heard there is another tsunami coming”. I saw my life end that moment. My body was suspended in the density of our reality and I was almost certain that my time had come. I had never felt so close to death. I knew there was no point climbing or running. The ocean had already shown us that it was more powerful than that.
Time passed. When every second is so valuable, you come to realise that time is just a concept. It is a malleable force and a whole life can be lived in just one moment. As I waited in that minivan, in that traffic jam, I experienced life so deeply and understood it with such profound clarity that I was prepared to let go of everything and accept anything.
There was no second wave.
I survived the long and bumpy drive to Colombo, along the coastal road littered with broken buildings and families. During the remainder of the journey I sought to understand why I had been saved when hundreds of thousands around me hadn’t. The words that kept repeating through my mind, body and soul were “To help others”.
A month later I began studying photography.
It was years before I began using my photography to help people in need, and at times it seemed impossible. I will never be able to help everyone I want to help, but step by step I will try to live up to the paramount message I had been so clearly gifted in Sri Lanka.
