From Syria to Iraq, Save the Children centenary photo show reveals indomitable spirit of kids in war zones
- Fifty images by photojournalist Nicole Tung will go on show in her native Hong Kong to mark the centenary of the Save the Children charity
- With a focus on Syria and Iraq, many of the images show children who still have big hopes and dreams despite having their lives destroyed by war
Hong Kong photojournalist Nicole Tung has witnessed many times the devastating impact that conflict has on civilians. Since graduating from New York University in 2009 she has covered a number of conflict zones and conflict-affected areas, mostly in the Middle East.
In 2011, she was in Libya capturing the revolution that would overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. The same year she covered the Arab spring in Egypt and later the fall of its then president Hosni Mubarak. Other assignments have taken her to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she photographed former child soldiers, and home to Hong Kong to cover the 2014 pro-democracy protests. In the US, the 33-year-old has photographed Native American war veterans and more recently she has turned her lens on abused women in Turkey.
But it was while covering the Syrian civil war that Tung says she matured as a photographer – and as a person.
“That’s when I thought it was more important to focus on civilians,” says Tung, who is now based in Istanbul and whose work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Le Monde, Stern Magazine and Harper’s.
This weekend, 50 of Tung’s images, with a focus on Syria and Iraq, will be shown as part of events marking the centenary of the Save the Children charity. The organisation was established in London in 1919 by Eglantyne Jebb, whose mission was to end children’s suffering across war-torn Europe in the wake of the first world war. Sadly, her message to protect children from conflict is as important today as it was then.
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As part of its centenary, Save the Children has launched Stop the War on Children, a global campaign to raise awareness to protect children living in conflict. In Hong Kong, events marking the campaign will be held at Central’s PMQ shopping venue on May 11 and 12.
“When Save The Children approached me for this exhibition they asked me to look through my archives,” Tung says. “Children in conflict was never a focal point for me – I was focused on civilians, and of course children are part of that, but I never thought of children as a specific theme for my photos. But when I looked through my photos – from eight years ago until now – I was like ‘wow, there really are a lot of kids in my pictures’. And a lot of pictures showed only kids – kids living in their own world of weird destruction.
“There were kids working in fields or outside playing no matter what the conditions were around them. It’s like they had become used to this rhythm of war – it had become part of their life. And what’s even more frightening is they can name every type of weapon.”
At the Save the Children office in Sai Wan, Tung explains the stories behind some of her images as they flash up on a screen.
One shows boys happily swimming in a fountain at a park in the Syrian city of Raqqa. It was taken in May last year, seven months after the end of the offensive by the Syrian Democratic Forces and US-led coalition that, according to Amnesty International, killed more than 1,600 civilians and injured thousands more.
“People had moved back to a city devastated by coalition air strikes,” Tung says. “There were unexploded ordinance left behind and dead bodies were being found. Kids were playing in these environments.”
Tung says many images linger, in particular those taken in 2012 in the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo.
“I spent a week in a hospital that was treating civilian casualties,” she recalls. “But there was one boy in particular who I won’t forget. He was sitting outside a hospital, a body bag in front of him … it was his father in the body bag. The boy, who was 12 – his name was Ahmed – had this listless look on his face and had also been injured, so he had this bandage across his chest.
“He was either trying not to show emotion or was in shock – or both. But what was so sad was his resilience – he had this listless look on his face and was trying to keep it all together even though he had just lost his father.”
Tung points to another picture showing girls disembarking a school bus in Mosul, Iraq, after the city was liberated by the Iraqi forces. “The girls have missed years of education but they are full of hope.”
Other images in the exhibition at PMQ were taken in April when Tung visited the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan – the world’s largest refugee camp for Syrians – to document the lives of Syrian children in the camp.
“When I was in Jordan with Save The Children, I was involved in a partnership with [British football club] Arsenal that trains girls and boys to play football. This girl, who was probably about 12, came up to me and asked: ‘How do I become a journalist?’
“These kids’ homes and lives have been destroyed by war but they still have big hopes and dreams.”
Tung says looking back over eight years of archival photos was both an emotional experience and a personal one.
“I lost friends along the way,” she says, including good friend James Foley, a US freelance war correspondent who was beheaded by Islamic State in Syria in 2014.
“When it’s intense and people are dying in front of you and around you, you build a little resistance to absorb everything. If you break down and cry you won’t be able to function.
“It really hits me when I’m back home looking through my photos and I remember what I have witnessed. That’s when I have to process it.”
