Capturing the Karail Disaster
Three German photographers—Sarah Rubensdörffer, Silvia Béres and Jakob Berr—went to a slum in Karail for a photo-story they had planned to highlight contrasting living standards on view in two adjacent residential areas of Dhaka: elegant Gulshan and the squalid Karail slum across the lake. They did not know that the visit would provide them with some unique documents about the struggle for survival.
On March 4, a fire broke out and destroyed a large part of Karail slum, leaving 38 people dead and hundreds of others injured. Thick columns of smoke and ashes billowed up in the sky from the collapsing houses. In only one hour the fire completely destroyed the place. Along with the panicked slum-dwellers, the three Germans also had to run for their lives. Nevertheless, they took as many photographs as they could to document the plight of these people.
The three held an exhibition at the Goethe Institut in Dhaka in April with 27 photographs of the Karail disaster. The blown-up images project all the horror and helplessness of the situation the German photographers witnessed at Karail on that fateful day.
The exhibition also contains a long write-up describing their experience from the moment of their arrival at the slum to the journey back to safety. The trio describes the heart-felt welcome they were given by the slum-people on their arrival. ‘That hearty hospitality of these people who have almost nothing but themselves deeply touched us inside,’ they write. The Germans had asked the inhabitants of Karail, with the help of an interpreter, about many aspects of their daily life.
However, at one point of their visit they came to know from the interpreter that a fire had broken out nearby. At first everyone considered the fire to be an ordinary one that would be put out with little effort. Unfortunately for the poor people of Karail, the fire spread swiftly and started engulfing adjacent structures and advancing furiously. Most of the houses in the slum were made of highly combustible materials. The cloud of smoke grew faster and soon the three foreigners saw a ‘vast square fire of catastrophic dimensions’.
In the end, however, the German photographers were able to get to the other shore of the lake. Even in crossing the lake by boat, ‘people invited us to go first,’ recalls the trio in gratitude. ‘We don’t think that it was just a simple coincidence that we were there,’ Sarah Rubensdörffer, Silvia Béres and Jakob Berr write. ‘Remembering the old man’s words, we feel that the moment we entered the island, we took on some responsibility that turned into a demanding duty, when we left.’
—H Rashid
Three German photographers—Sarah Rubensdörffer, Silvia Béres and Jakob Berr—went to a slum in Karail for a photo-story they had planned to highlight contrasting living standards on view in two adjacent residential areas of Dhaka: elegant Gulshan and the squalid Karail slum across the lake. They did not know that the visit would provide them with…