Diving down
Andrew Testa
From Eyes wide Open
THAILAND, Surin Islands, 2004
The chief of the community dives down with a harpoon to fish. The Moken are a nomadic tribe of just a few hundred people, who live on Mu Ko Surin island off the western coast of Thailand. The community has attracted international attention for their extraordinary underwater eyesight. It is believed that years of practice have enabled the Moken to see better out of necessity, helping them to hunt for fish and spot mussels on the sea bed.
‘The Thai authorities have heavily discouraged the community from being nomadic so they're pretty much tied to the Surin islands now. They build their houses on the beach on stilts and don't really use the interior of the island too much. Their life is very much water based. The Moken don't have a written language, everything is passed down from generation to generation. This photo was taken three weeks before the tsunami, and the community pretty
much all survived. They had a story that when the sea disappears, run to the interior, because it's going to come back and eat you.’
Specification
Andrew Testa
Andrew Testa began photographing in the early 1990s. Throughout the decade he documented growing environmental protests and animal rights movements. In 1999 he shifted his attention to the Balkans covering the war in Kosovo. At the end of 1999 he moved to Kosovo, which he used as a base to cover events throughout Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. After five years in the Balkans and a further five in the US, Andrew returned to the UK and has spent much of the last decade covering Brexit and its fallout across the UK and Ireland.
Andrew’s work has been exhibited all over the world – at Angkor Photo Festival (Siem Reap, 2005), Visa pour l’Image (Perpignan, France, 2006), Noorderlicht (2007), Arte Foto Festival (Ancona, Italy, 2008) and the Yangon Photo Festival (2012).
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