Like soothsayers examining entrails we may interpret the past through discarded debris. We see ghosts in an empty room, feel the warmth of life where there is only dust. For over a decade, Susannah Baker-Smith traveled and worked in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, capturing memories with her camera.
Text: Susannah Baker-Smith, Photos: Susannah Baker-Smith
© Susannah Baker-Smith
© Susannah Baker-Smith
Refugee camp – Bekaa Valley – Lebanon
The walls of the dwellings in these camps are made from old billboard posters. Displaced families shelter under advertisements for Kentucky Fried Chicken, American Express, and Calvin Klein underwear. This house caught my eye, whether by accident or design, it looked like it could fly away.
© Susannah Baker-Smith
Playground – Jaffna – Sri Lanka
I visited Jaffna just after the war, I had to apply for a permit and was forbidden from taking pictures. There were army everywhere, and trying to evade them I found this place. Only goats and dogs were wandering among the swings and roundabouts, I was told a bomb had been dropped on it a while back, and no one would go near for fear of disturbing the ghosts.
© Susannah Baker-Smith
Statue – Jaffna – Sri Lanka
A poem I learnt as a child:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
© Susannah Baker-Smith
Ntarama Catholic Church – Rwanda
About 10,000 people locked themselves in this church during the genocide of 1994. Their attackers made holes in the walls of the church to throw in hand grenades, after which the people inside were shot or killed with machetes. Their clothing and identity cards had been left as a memorial. The guardian told me her mother died there, she shared my name.
© Susannah Baker-Smith
Abandoned police station in Aleppo – Syria
Anyone who knows Syria will attest to the fact that everywhere there is a wall there will almost certainly be a picture of the President Assad. The pictures are hung largely from a sense of fear, or to instil fear. I have looked at this picture over again since the war began, for a time his face seemed destined to remain in the dust ... I hope.
© Susannah Baker-Smith
Roadside memorial – New Mexico
‘Decancos' as they are called are sadly common along the roads here, relatives or friends gather bottles or whatever else they can find to create a marker for the place where a person’s soul has left its body.
© Susannah Baker-Smith
Mausoleum – Hyderabad – India
A sprawling complex of archways, corridors, and tombs, all in white marble. A cool pleasure palace for the dead, where the children of the guardian played, dogs searched for a warm spot to sleep, and I saw some handkerchiefs drying on a line.
© Susannah Baker-Smith
For over a decade SUSANNAH BAKER-SMITH travelled and worked extensively in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In 2007/2008 she studied at the Institute of Contemporary Photography (ICP) in New York and has since embarked on a series of interrelated projects exploring memory. Embracing digital, analogue and alternative photographic processes, each project is realised loosely in book form, creating a tactile and visual dialogue with objects and images.
This shoot was published in the print edition #4 “The Wasted Issue”. You can order the magazine in our SHOP.
For over a decade SUSANNAH BAKER-SMITH travelled and worked extensively in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In 2007/2008 she studied at the Institute of Contemporary Photography (ICP) in New York and has since embarked on a series of interrelated projects exploring memory. Embracing digital, analogue and alternative photographic processes, each project is realised loosely in book form, creating a tactile and visual dialogue with objects and images.