Alan Chin

Born and raised in New York City, since 1996 photojournalist Alan Chin has covered conflicts in Iraq, the ex-Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Alan has most recently documented the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake in China, and completed a long-term project on New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. He contributes regularly to the New York Times, Newsweek, and Time magazines, exhibits at Sasha Wolf Gallery and the Asian-American Arts Center, and is in the collection of the Museum Of Modern Art. The New York Times nominated his Kosovo coverage for the Pulitzer Prize twice, in 1999 and 2000.

"When the massive 8.0 earthquake struck Sichuan Province in Western China during the afternoon of May 12 , I felt it a thousand miles away in the capital, Beijing, where office buildings were evacuated for several hours. Initial reports were spotty and gave little idea of the apocalyptic number of casualties, but by late evening it was becoming somberly clear that the situation was grave in the extreme. I flew to Sichuan the next morning, on assignment for Newsweek magazine. The towns and cities destroyed by the earthquake reminded me, as it did to many others, of grim scenes from Sarajevo, Kabul, or Baghdad. Everywhere the familiar tableaux of death, shattered buildings, ruined roads and bridges. No water or electricity, normal life ground to a halt. Soldiers and aid workers scrambled to succor the victims, their efforts dwarfed by the scale of catastrophe and horror. But unlike war, acts of God defy human intervention. There was no one to blame, no politics or diplomacy, only the sheer humbling fact of instant, massive disaster. Later would come the recriminations against shoddy construction and an unresponsive government bureaucracy favoring the wealthy over the poor. These photographs, I hope, serve to memorialize the dead, and honor the dignity and resilience of the survivors."