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“At first, the refugees were scattered everywhere. As I took a few shots of the smouldering pots of tea, more people cramped into my frame. Soon, the refugees were all there in the frame, as if they had a message to deliver.”
So says thirty-one year old freelance photographer Edwin Koo, based in Katmandu in Nepal and represented by the US-based Zuma agency.
Edwin, originally from Singapore, travelled in May 2009 to the Sheikh Yassin refugee camp in Mardan, Pakistan, where two million refugees fled this year after the Pakistani army entered the Swat Valley in pursuit of Taliban militants.
“ It was as if they wanted me to make that image,” says Edwin, referring to the first in his gallery and his favorite. “I shot a few frames and then shared the pictures with them on my LCD screen.”
“Photographer James Whitlow Delano says that you should pass quietly and quickly, taking what you can, before your presence disturbs the scene. I agree with him,” says Edwin. “But sometimes this approach is impossible. We cannot always be a fly-on-the-wall.”
Edwin, previously worked as a staff photographer for Singapore’s national broadsheet The Straits Times and local tabloid Streats. He has won several awards and exhibited in his native Singapore as well as in Nepal.
Other images in the gallery - taken with his Nikon D700 and D300 using natural light - show some of the devastation of the situation as the army hits the militants and they retaliate.
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