Dilemma. Its a Greek word meaning two propositions, two choices. The visualization as horns came later signifying a choice between two options both likely cause pain. We all, no matter how wealthy or talented or lucky, eventually find we are limited. We cannot have it all because we are limited: by time, by resources, by physical limitations, by our ability to focus on only a limited number of goals. So, we make the trade-offs which we think are best.

I spent some time a few years ago photographing a small coastal neighborhood on the outskirts of Jakarta. I was there because the community had been inundated with trash clogging their waterways from villages lining the rivers which carry trash into the sea, but not before collecting in a veritable landfill in this seaside village. Alot of people who saw the pictures commented on how sad and horrible it is to see all of that plastic trash, so I wanted to give a little fuller picture of why this happens and why it is so difficult a problem to overcome. Just stop using plastic, or at least cut back on buying products with plastic packaging – right?

Well if it were that simple it wouldn’t be a problem. Here’s why it is. Plastic is a solution to a lot of problems that people used to have. Most people are too young to remember milkmen, but 40-50 years ago there were actually people who drove around in trucks delivering glass bottles of milk to people’s doors every morning. Glass bottles for something non-alcoholic, not from France or Scotland? Glass and metal were the only available containers for liquid products at the time. It doesn’t sound so; bad both are recyclable minus breakage, so why did people switch to plastic in the first place. There were probably lots of reasons, but I’m going to guess that weight was a big one. Think of the weight of all of those glass bottles and the additional fuel for trucks hauling that weight around.

Choosing plastic was an economic decision then. And it still is. When you look at much of the plastic swirling in the drains and streams of an impoverished place and what you see most frequently is little packets of soap, shampoo and other single use products. A sachet of shampoo in Indonesia costs about 1,500 rupiah (about US 10 cents) while a plastic bottle costs about 90,000 (about US 5 dollars) and even though it is cheaper per ml, the overall expenditure for an entire bottle is too much to spend at one time for many people. The remainder of the limited income has to be spent on food or rent or electricity or other necessities.

Plastic packaging has become a necessary choice for many, and one which has put people with limited resources on the horns of a dilemma. They don’t like being surrounded by platic trash any more than you would.

Back in my school days, I remember studying history’s great disasters, the wars, the famines,
the epidemics of this or that and wondering what it must have been like to live through those momentous happenings. I had been photographing the Covid pandemic on and off for a couple of years, and as I look back on the things I saw and heard and experienced, I’m trying to grasp exactly what it was like living through this momentous time. It’s hard to know what to make of it all. The empty streets, the busy graveyards, the howling noise of ambulances and the blare of endless statistics. They all say something in their own tragic inflection about that time.

As someone who looks at these happenings mostly visually, I’ve tried to ask myself which of those aspects is most telling. Is it the novelty of seeing peoples eyes but not their mouths, or the shock of seeing a crew in their plague suits walking down my street, the throngs of sick people trying to get into an overcrowded hospital; or is it the deserted streets and shops which signify for so many economic catastrophe? It all definitely created a surreal landscape in which to photograph. I may change my mind with the passage of time about what stuck out the most, but for now, beyond all that we can see and hear and read, lies the simple truth of the devastating sadness of families who had to say goodbye too soon to someone they cherished.

I spent days observing those on the front line who were hands on with all that death and sadness – the diggers of graves, and the transporters of the dead. This is not to downplay those on the other side of the frontline performing the daily miracles great and small that keep people alive. it’s just that the other end of the line is what this enormous disaster is all about in the end. So what did I learn from my time spent watching the holes being dug, then being filled over and over again surrounded by the small groups of relatives on hand to mourn too quickly and say hasty prayers? That grief is a weight. That enormous respect is owed to all those who were witness day in and day out to someone’s worst moments. Those who continually and viscerally confronted the statistics. How could they not become exhausted – not just by the physical labor – but by the continual miasma of grief as they catch a quick rest, eat a quick lunch, as they lay down the shovel to print in marker as best the can the name and todays date on the grave marker of the next victim. It is a heavy weight. Speaking to some of the grave diggers, they told me that it is a difficult part of their job, seeing distraught mothers and daughters and husbands. But even more so they said is the heaviness of handling the burial of a casket that comes with no family at all. As I focused on all of this, watching and photographing, a voice in the back of my head continually reminded me, keep a bit of distance or you’ll fall in the hole. You have to keep a bit of distance or you’ll collapse with the weight of those holes.