Tsunami 10 years after: on-line exhibition of work by Tim Hetherington

Tim Hetherington/Christian Aid

Ten years on from the Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed almost 250,000 people on Boxing Day 2004, Christian Aid is marking the anniversary by launching Tsunami: 10 years after the wave, an online exhibition that features work – including previously unpublished images - by photographer Tim Hetherington.

Tim, who was killed while working in Libya in 2011, travelled to Sri Lanka and India with Christian Aid as part of a commission for the exhibition Every time I see the sea, which marked the one-year anniversary in 2005. His thoughtful and emotionally intense images helped to capture the mood of a coastal community learning to trust again.

At the time, Tim told Christian Aid: “I was at home on the 26th December with my family. Like many other people, I switched on the TV. Two weeks later, I found myself in Banda Aceh. The amount of immediate death and destruction was on a massive scale. I had never seen anything like it in my life.”

“When I was asked to come to Sri Lanka, I came with that baggage, with those images in my mind. What I am trying here to do is create a continuum of that work – that does not just stay with images of destruction but moves the story onwards.”

Tim wanted to explore how people felt about the ocean, “I was interested in the relationship that people have with the sea. They lived by it; they needed it and used it. When the tsunami came, it challenged that relationship.”

The new online exhibition explains how Christian Aid spent £45 million, the majority donated by the UK public, over five years – rebuilding homes, providing trauma therapy and supporting people to get back to work.

It also examines how the 2004 tsunami triggered a global change in humanitarian response work - including better UN coordination and funding, more emphasis on vulnerable communities preparing for disasters, greater use of local organisations and more accountability to the recipients of aid.

Christian Aid’s head of humanitarian, Nick Guttmann said, “If the world had been better prepared, if early warning systems had been in place, and if vulnerable communities had been prepared to respond to a disaster like this, thousands of lives could have been saved.

“During Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines last year many people survived because at-risk communities were well prepared, early warning systems were in place - alerting them to rising waters and cyclones – as well as comprehensive evacuation plans; ensuring people know when to leave their homes and where to go. These simple techniques make a huge difference and are often the difference between life and death.”’

To find out more, visit www.christianaid.org.uk/tsunami

Link to two exceptional films of Tim at work: Tsunami portraits & after the tsunami

Hear Nick Guttmann on this podcast: https://audioboom.com/boos/2606592-the-tsunami-that-changed-our-work