In January, 2005, two weeks after the sea-floor quake and the resulting tsunami, Stephen Dupont traveled to Banda Aceh in Indonesia, the city that lay closest to the epicenter of the event. There he was a witness to the destructive force that nature can exert on man. The flood wave, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives throughout Southeast Asia and left millions of people homeless, had as good as erased Banda Aceh from the earth. There remained only chaos and misery. Even the survivors who sought the remains of their homes looked like zombies, says Dupont. 'There was no more emotion in that place. Everything was dead or lost.'

Stephen Dupont (Australia, b. 1967) started out as a Reuters photographer in Africa. As a freelancer he photographed war zones in Angola, Rwanda and Afghanistan for The New Yorker, Newsweek, Le Figaro, Stern and Vanity Fair, among other publications. He has won various prizes at World Press Photo.

Courtesy Contact Press Images, Time Magazine, United States