Beauty and Death

“Since life and death are one,
the river and the sea are one.”
(Gibran)

Banskhali, Chittagram District, Bangladesh (c)Daniel Schwartz

 

I love the saree. Anyone who knows me knows how my photographic career began thanks to the fascination with Indian and Bengali clothes, in love with their bright and vivid colors. Therefore I know well how the saree is a symbol of beauty for women of that area. But, like all things in life, there is a downside of this beautiful traditional garment, something unexpected, even for me.

 

A few months ago I bought a beautiful photo book called “Delta”, about the life of the peoples who live along the rivers of Asia, with a long section dedicated to Bangladesh.

In a chapter about the tragedies that took place along the rivers, there is one part on Bangladesh that is truly terrible. In Banskhali, in the Chattagram District, in 1991, women and children were among over four-fifth of the dead killed by cyclone and storm flood.

The reason for the death of some of these women was their saree. The long wet and heavy fabric worked like a trap for them, making them drown like a chain of death in brackish waters, marking their destiny.

The description, the photographs, and the feelings of those who survive are terrible.

“On the night of the flood, the five-meter-long sari became a death trap.

Women who survived hid in the brackish water of ponds until passers-by brought clothes. And if they took them from dead bodies themselves, they were traumatized by the feeling of guilt at still being alive.”

Never would I have imagined how the saree could also be a symbol of death and despair.

But this is an unavoidable law of life: everything has two sides, two opposites. Certainly, now, I no longer look at the saree just as I once did: in its bright colors, in its deep red, there are also the screams of women drowned in mud.

“How big is a woman's heart? Why shouldn't she die?”
Male cyclone survivor

 

Model in saree in a photo shooting for a fashion magazine. Dhaka, February 2020

Old lady in saree. Rome, April 2018

 

Daniel Schwartz: “Delta – The perlis, profits and politics of water in South and Southeast Asia” (Thames & Hudson, 1997)

 

Italian version