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Bhaktapur Chronicle: Magnitude 7.8
It was an average calm ordinary Saturday when around noon on 25th April 2015, 14.5 kilometers below the earth’s surface the Indian tectonic plate crashed into the Eurasian plate. Within seconds the earth shook violently accompanied by a loud rumbling sound of thunder that moved beneath the grounds. The roads cracked, houses start to collapse and screams of terror reverberated in Kathmandu valley and it spread across remote hamlets in the foothills of the Himalayas. Within minutes millions of lives across the country was tarnished forever. It was the deadliest earthquakes and natural disasters ever recorded in the history of Nepal.
According to U.N. Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs, more than 8 million people – over a quarter of the Nepal’s population – have been directly affected; 2.8 million people were in need of direct humanitarian assistance. It leveled thousands of homes and buildings and the number of fatalities reached up to 9,000.
In the chaos of an immeasurable scale, I photo documented Bhaktapur, one of the 14 most severely affected districts in Nepal. The Chronicle is a series of environmental portraits taken within days in the aftermath of the quake. Survivors are photographed in the heart of their former homes that has transformed into a pile of disintegrated ruins. These images of survivors in the utter wreckage of their homes and lives embodies the unimaginable catastrophe and the scope of the annihilation Nepal faced that unforgettable day, and continued to face through months of aftershocks. Can the people of Nepal pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and homes and rebuild?