Nirvana of Earthquake Survivors by Qiu Yan

On 12 May, 2008, an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 struck Wenchuan, China, killing more than 69,000 people, injuring over 370,000 more and leaving another 17,000 missing. They say that ‘time is a great healer’, but it can also make things worse.

This photographic series focuses on the survivors of the tragedy. The first stage was to take portraits in 2008, 2009, 2014, 2018 and 2023. In each one, the survivors held a print of their previous portrait, so the final image combines multiple portraits showing the passage of time. I juxtaposed the portraits with images of the earthquake scene from 2008, which I printed and burned, tore, sprayed with water mist, reassembled, rephotographed and pasted to symbolise ‘nirvana’ and a ‘rebirth from the ashes’. To this composite I added text from the survivors, written in Chinese, describing their 15-year life journey since the earthquake.