Hunter Barnes: A World Away
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Located off the southern tip of India, Sri Lanka is a country heralded for its natural tropical beauty, yet since 1983 civil divides have birthed war, aggression, and death on its lands.
![a man stands in the sand in front of a leaning temple in Sri Lanka](/museum/sites/default/files/styles/1136x639/public/2024-01/hunter_barnes_fallen_temple_832w.jpg?fv=QZqJ8xMA&itok=cpkZ1df3)
In 2006, photographer Hunter Barnes travelled to Sri Lanka, intending to document the devastating aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. Instead, he arrived amid rapidly increasing tensions in the civil war and a breakdown of the ceasefire established four years previously.
A World Away—based on Barnes’ book of black and white photographs taken in the Eastern Province among the Tamil people, and accompanied by his personal handwritten diary entries—offers a rare glimpse into a largely visually undocumented period in Sri Lankan history.