Andy Bush, whose compelling piece about Iraq we shared a couple of months ago, has penned another fascinating article about the UXO (unexploded ordnance) contamination in Laos during the war between the Pathet Lao communists and US backed Royal Lao Army, and his experience travelling with and documenting the work of an UXO demolition and removal team.
According to statistics, Laos is the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. The US carried out nearly 600,000 bombing missions from 1964 to 1973, releasing over 270 million cluster bombs, of which an estimated 75 million remain unexploded. Many of these bombs are accidentally discovered by unsuspecting farmers or even children who mistake them for playthings, resulting in dozens of casualties every year.
Andy’s aim in travelling to Laos was to document the actions being taken to clean up the mess left in the wake of the war, and we can say that once again, he has done a wonderful job of capturing the people of Laos, the countryside and the teams working to remove the bombs.
Our favourite image is of a young boy who Andy calls “Mr. Confident” for the intense way in which he stared Andy down during his visit to the village of Dak Dom.
As always, his images were taken with his Fujifilm X-T1, XF 10-24mm, 16mm, 23mm and 56mm. You can read the full article here.
