A man sits in the middle of a demolition site in front of a makeshift hut that serves as shelter from the weather. In Antakya, Turkey, countless houses were destroyed or damaged in the devastating earthquake of 2023.

ANTAKYA 04.02.2024

Boris Roessler
dpa photographer, 
Frankfurt (Main) office

I had walked in the same place where this photo was taken the previous year, through metres-high rubble of residential buildings, which had collapsed like houses of cards within seconds of the earthquake. In the months that followed, excavators had done a thorough job of clearing away rubble from large parts of the huge area. What remained were muddy, eerily empty areas, from which the few remaining buildings towered like foreign objects. In the middle of this vast area, from a distance I initially mistook the man’s tiny shack for a pile of rubble. It was only when I looked closer that I discovered the man crouching on a chair in front of his shelter, which had been cobbled together from planks and scrap metal, staring into nothingness. It was cold and drizzling, but the man tried to explain, gesticulating with his hands and feet, that there had once been houses all around him. In retrospect, I greatly regretted not being able to speak Turkish, because I am certain that the “man on the chair” could have told me so much more.