Harrowing images of Nepal quake captured by local teacher

The harrowing images of last year's earthquake in Nepal is captured in the photo-documentary, BC: Through the Lens of Love, Fear and Faith, by local teacher, Ernest Pillay at the Durban Art gallery this month. The evocative collection of photographs by Pillay, captures the horror, fear, destruction and majesty of the earthquake in Napal in 2015.

Entitled BC: Through the Lens of Love, Fear and Faith, the photographs document the direct aftermath of the earthquake from the vantage point of the Everest Base Camp. Pillay’s photographs journal his extraordinary first-hand experience of the earthquake – capturing both the physical enormity and his intrinsically personal response to this phenomenal destructive act of nature.

Pillay, who teaches design at Ganges Secondary, was travelling to Tibet with his wife with the intention of climbing Everest. His wife suffered from severe altitude sickness and was sent via helicopter to hospital, leaving Pillay to continue to the assent with his guide, alone. He was in a mountain cabin at the Tokla Pass when the earthquake struck. While physically unharmed, Pillay was profoundly moved by his experience when the earthquake shook the mountains, rained down boulders, slush and mud, and transformed the landscape into a sight reminiscent of an eerie desolate moonscape.

“Not far from where I stood, the mountain track that was now virtually hanging by its fingernails, began sliding down the mountain, with trekkers still on it…Later that night, feeling cold and damp in the dank surrounds of Lobuche (5000m.), it registered only then what a tenuous grip I had on life that day…what prevented me from flying down that slope…with mini avalanches all around me…I wondered then at the power that these mountains exert over us… beckoning to people to push themselves to undergo such feats of courage, strength and purity,” he said of the experience.

The event was a defining moment in his life, which allowed him to have some life-affirming realisations and observations. “There was a profound sense of connectedness,” explained Pillay, “I was acutely aware of the cycles of life. I was also reminded that love over rides all fear and learned behaviour. Life is not a linear reality, it is repetitive and cyclic, and for a while, oxygen and water become all that matters. We only grow as human beings if we overcome the most severe conditions and we cannot walk this path in the comfort of our own homes.”

BC: Through the Lens of Love, Fear and Faith is Pillay’s first solo exhibition. The photographs chronicle the experience – swirling snow; damaged mountain tracks; crumbling buildings – the enormity and extent of the quake and its impact on the mountain and the village are captured in Pillay’s visual essay.

The exhibition runs until 24 April. DAG is open Monday to Saturday from 8.30am until 4pm, and Sundays from 11am until 4pm. Entry is free and all are welcome. Contact the Gallery on 031 311 2264/9 for more information.