Added At: 2011-01-10 9:44 PM
Last Updated At: 2011-01-10 9:44 PM
HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICEKATHMANDU: War has been the dark side of the society bringing end to lives of many. And it is very important to know about the consequences and the destruction human civilisation has to bear due to war to avoid war in near future. Depicting this very sentiment Sri Lankan photographer Gemunu Amarasinghe gave a presentation on his latest collection of photos titled People in Between on January 8 at Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka.
The exhibition has been going on at the Shanti Sangralaya at the Madan Puraskar Putstakalaya since December 10.
The event started on a musical note with the melodious tune of the song Sampanna by the band Suvaprabat. Then the photographer took the audience through all the brutal and horrifying scenes of his country that went through decades of war captured through his camera. These photos told the stories of violence and terror among the victims of the war displaying their emotions. Women and children shedding tears for their loved ones were captured rather poignantly in his photographs. A woman crying, a mother and a son crying at a graveyard, an empty coffin, dead bodies lying on a road and funeral were the visions seen in these
photographs.
“We pay a lot during a war. If we push back to war, we are going to face the same horror. So, this exhibition is a reminder to show the consequences of a war. We also have to think from the victims’ point of view,” Amarasinghe explained the reason behind this exhibition. “These photographs send a message of peace. It is a follow up about the victims of the war. They show lives before and after the war,” remarked convener of the Shanti Sangralaya Kunda Dixit. The presentation was followed by a guided tour of the exhibition.
The exhibition is on till January 10.
Last Updated At: 2011-01-10 9:44 PM
HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE
KATHMANDU: War has been the dark side of the society bringing end to lives of many. And it is very important to know about the consequences and the destruction human civilisation has to bear due to war to avoid war in near future. Depicting this very sentiment Sri Lankan photographer Gemunu Amarasinghe gave a presentation on his latest collection of photos titled People in Between on January 8 at Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka.
The exhibition has been going on at the Shanti Sangralaya at the Madan Puraskar Putstakalaya since December 10.
The event started on a musical note with the melodious tune of the song Sampanna by the band Suvaprabat. Then the photographer took the audience through all the brutal and horrifying scenes of his country that went through decades of war captured through his camera. These photos told the stories of violence and terror among the victims of the war displaying their emotions. Women and children shedding tears for their loved ones were captured rather poignantly in his photographs. A woman crying, a mother and a son crying at a graveyard, an empty coffin, dead bodies lying on a road and funeral were the visions seen in these
photographs.
“We pay a lot during a war. If we push back to war, we are going to face the same horror. So, this exhibition is a reminder to show the consequences of a war. We also have to think from the victims’ point of view,” Amarasinghe explained the reason behind this exhibition. “These photographs send a message of peace. It is a follow up about the victims of the war. They show lives before and after the war,” remarked convener of the Shanti Sangralaya Kunda Dixit. The presentation was followed by a guided tour of the exhibition.
The exhibition is on till January 10.
The exhibition has been going on at the Shanti Sangralaya at the Madan Puraskar Putstakalaya since December 10.
The event started on a musical note with the melodious tune of the song Sampanna by the band Suvaprabat. Then the photographer took the audience through all the brutal and horrifying scenes of his country that went through decades of war captured through his camera. These photos told the stories of violence and terror among the victims of the war displaying their emotions. Women and children shedding tears for their loved ones were captured rather poignantly in his photographs. A woman crying, a mother and a son crying at a graveyard, an empty coffin, dead bodies lying on a road and funeral were the visions seen in these
photographs.
“We pay a lot during a war. If we push back to war, we are going to face the same horror. So, this exhibition is a reminder to show the consequences of a war. We also have to think from the victims’ point of view,” Amarasinghe explained the reason behind this exhibition. “These photographs send a message of peace. It is a follow up about the victims of the war. They show lives before and after the war,” remarked convener of the Shanti Sangralaya Kunda Dixit. The presentation was followed by a guided tour of the exhibition.
The exhibition is on till January 10.
http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/rssReference.php?headline=Brutal+visions+of+war++&NewsID=272531
A tale of two wars
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010
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SRI LANKA: Tamil Tiger guerrilla trains other women at a drill in Jaffna in 2005. GEMUNU AMARASINGHE
NEPAL: A Maoist woman guerrilla at a mass meeting in Rolpa in 2004. KIYOKO OGURA
Few are unaffected when they visit the exhibition of photographs of the Sri Lanka war by Gemunu Amarasinghe. There are pictures of a young boy in a make-believe US Army combat fatigue with this mother at his father’s grave, clouds of flies at a morgue where the bodies of civilians lie scattered, a group of women break down in front of a headless body, a ditch full of the corpses of massacred villagers many of them with their hands tied behind their backs.
Amarasinghe took pictures of the Sri Lanka conflict between 1995-2006, and his lens is sharply focussed on the civilian victims of the war that took 120,000 lives over 25 years. Amarasinghe now works for AP in Nepal and has taken strikingly dramatic pictures like the haunting one of the Gadimai massacre of water buffaloes that went around the world. His work now takes him frequently across South Asia and into Afghanistan.
SRI LANKA: Rani Rajan weeps as she sees the remains of her brother Pakiyarasa Baskaran at a morgue in northeastern town of Trincomalee in 2006. GEMUNU AMARASINGHE
NEPAL: A brother comforts his two sisters after their father was killed in Bhaktapur in 2005. SURESH SAIJU
Thirty of Amarasinghe’s photographs are on display in Kathmandu amidst the images of the Nepal conflict from the book, ‘A People War’. The juxtaposition of the Sri Lanka pictures with the photographs of the Nepal conflict evoke strong emotions that transcends boundaries, and highlights the universality of images of suffering and pain.
“What I wanted to do was show the war from the point of view of the civilian victims,” said Amarasinghe at the inauguration of the exhibit last week, “by humanizing the war, you can show that people are more than just statistics.”
The exhibition will continue till January 11, 2011 as a part of the Shanti Sangralaya that has a collection of images of photographs of the Nepal war. Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya is converting this permanent exhibition into a historical museum of the Nepal conflict.
Most visitors have compared the Sri Lanka and Nepal conflicts to look for lessons. Unlike Nepal’s class war, the Sri Lanka conflict was an ethno-separatist one. And because of that it was much more virulent and brutal, it has left a legacy of bad blood which makes the reconciliation process much more difficult. Four years after the comprehensive peace accord, Nepal’s peace process may be stuck, but the healing process here has been easier.
SRI LANKA: An unidentified Tamil boy and his mother weep as his grand mother looks on at the grave of his father who lost his life fighting for the Tamil Tigers. GEMUNU AMARASINGHE
NEPAL: A young woman grieves on finding the body of her husband after the battle of Naumule in which 36 policemen were killed in 2002. CHANDRA SHEKHAR KARK
In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers who developed terrorism and suicide bombing into a fine art, were vanquished in a violent finale that exacted a terrible price on civilians. Nepal’s conflict, on the other hand, had neither victors nor losers. Both sides became rulers. Even though the monarchy was replaced with a republic, the king wasn’t hounded into exile as has happened elsewhere.
Gemunu Amarasinghe will be on hand at the Madan Puraskar venue on Saturday January 8 for a special edition of photo-circle to discuss his war photography.
‘People In Between’
Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, Patan Dhoka
Till 10 January, 2011
11am-4pm, open all days except Tuesday
Till 10 January, 2011
11am-4pm, open all days except Tuesday
See also: The wars within
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