Turkey and Syria
“Had tears in my eyes”: Photographer on the picture that became a symbol of the suffering of the earthquake victims
Mesut Hancer holds the hand of his 15-year-old daughter Irmak, who was buried by debris and died during the devastating quake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey
© Adem Altan / AFP
After the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, a photo goes around the world: a man holds his dead daughter’s hand, her body is buried under the rubble. Even the photographer cannot let go of the picture.
Adem Altan has been a photographer for 40 years and has been working for 15 years for the AFP news agency. But his work in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, which was badly hit by the earthquake, got under the skin of even the hardened photographer.
It’s Tuesday, one day after the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the Turkish-Syrian border area. No rescue team has yet arrived in the city, which is close to the epicenter. People are trying as best they can to clear away the rubble of the collapsed buildings, under which they can hear the voices of those buried under.
A man in an orange warning jacket stands out in the chaos. He sits there completely still, he doesn’t seem to feel the icy cold. “When I looked closer, I saw that he was holding a hand,” reports Adem Altan. She was bedded on a mattress with rubble protruding. The rest of the body was buried under huge concrete slabs.
“My God, what an unbearable pain”
The photographer starts capturing the scene from about 60 meters away. It’s a sensitive moment, but the man in the orange jacket calls him over. He briefly lets go of his hand, points to the mattress and whispers in a broken, trembling voice: “Take pictures of my child”. Then he shows Altan the girl and quickly takes hold of her waxen hand again and strokes it. She doesn’t move; her owner is no longer alive.
“I saw a person’s head under the rubble. I asked him his name,” Altan says. “Mesut Hançer,” the man replied. “Then I asked his child’s name. He was a little far away and I had trouble understanding him.” “My daughter, Irmak,” Hançer said. The 15-year-old was crushed in her bed when the first tremor struck at dawn.
“I was so touched by the moment. I had tears in my eyes and found it difficult not to cry when I took the photos,” Adem Altan describes his feelings during the encounter. “I was so sad. I kept saying to myself: ‘My God, what an unbearable pain.'” He only manages with difficulty to ask the traumatized man for the most important information. “He could hardly speak,” says Altan. “It was difficult to question him further because his neighbors demanded silence so they could hear the voices of the survivors under the rubble.”
Before and after shots
Satellite images show the extent of the earthquake disaster in Turkey
“After I took the photos, I waited for a while, expecting that someone would come and take the girl away. Unfortunately, nobody came,” Altan later reports to the British “Guardian”. Eventually he had to leave Hançer and Irmak to continue documenting the destruction for AFP. “But I was curious about what happened to them, so the next morning I went back to the ruins where the father and daughter had been,” says the photographer. “I don’t know what happened to the father. He wasn’t there when I arrived the next day. And his daughter wasn’t there either.”
Photo symbolizes the suffering of victims in Turkey and Syria
Even as he was taking his photos of the lonely death guard amidst the rubble, Adem Altan thought how much the pictures symbolize the desperation of the earthquake victims. He had no idea how deep their effect would go.
Media around the world picked up the photo of the mourner, and it was shared hundreds of thousands of times on online networks. “It has attracted a lot of attention both in Turkey and around the world,” Altan told the Guardian. “I’ve received hundreds of messages saying, ‘A very powerful photo showing the pain of the earthquake’.” The father wanted the world to see his loss, and it does.
For Altan, the photo is a symbol of the terrible suffering of the earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria, but also of their quiet dignity. He couldn’t compare them to any picture he’d taken before. “The photo drew a lot of attention, yes. But I can’t say I’m happy. It’s a disaster.”
Adem Altan believes that the recording will still be remembered years later. “Many have told me that they will never forget this picture until they die,” he says. Neither does he himself.
Sources: AFP, “The Guardians”