I’m sat here early in the morning in my cosy warm house, cat on my lap, dog by my side. The television’s on, I can’t sleep but that’s about the only ‘problem’ I’ve got. I am a lucky sod, and I try not to forget it.
I have just seen a report on the news about the possibility of an end to the war in Sri Lanka. I would love to see the violence end, the people and the country deserve it. Whether the war will end is another matter, another post for another day.
When I travelled up to Jaffna a few years ago there was a ceasefire. It didn’t last long. I was on a commission to photograph some recuperating ¬†LTTE child soldiers. They were at a secret camp in Killinochi run by UNICEF. They had originally been taken from their families and made to fight. They were the lucky ones, they were rescued.
Unicef gave them a semblance of an education, and hoped to be able to return them to their families. That job was probably the most terrifying I have ever done, pushing through mine strewn Jaffna in a UN jeep, taking my pics whilst an LTTE gunman growled his disapproval at me, his machine gun inches from my head.
My fear can only have been a fraction of that felt daily by those children.
I was not allowed to show the faces of the children, but I needed the pics to impact upon the viewer. I decided to hide their faces with flowers, hoping to jolt the viewer into questioning what they were looking at, make them think about the juxtaposition of lost innocence, beauty, war and the fragility of life. I doubt many people got the idea, especially after the commissioning magazine ran the pic Рjust the one Рthe size of a postage stamp. That pissed me off; not because I am precious about my pics, far from it,  but because I wanted people to see, to know, to understand, not to turn the page to the next free stinking perfume sample.
Every time I hear of Sri Lanka I flash back to those children, and the ravaged landscape of Jaffna, its earth and its people torn by decades of violence. I wonder where they are, if they are. I hope they have something resembling a normal life now. I hope they can dream of a future.
If you would care to see the full set of portraits they can be found on my archive
DW
A young ex LTTE child soldier hides his face to protect his identity at a secret camp run by Unicef, Jaffna, Sri Lanka.
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