ruben timman photography

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Road to paradise
Grieving mothers of Nineveh
Back to Kon Tum, Vietnam.
The hill of the forgotten ones

The hill of the forgotten ones

On top of the hill, where the wind blows endlessly over a bare landscape, stands a home for the handicapped. Outside are baby carriages with people in them - not children, but adults. Adults with no legs, and there the carriages stand, sometimes the whole day. It's a peaceful atmosphere, not hostile, but certainly sad.

Many rooms. Rooms for the weak and rooms for the strong. The strong claim everything for themselves. They have water and light. They look out for one other. The weak sleep on beds without mattresses, have no water and no light. They can't look after each other. Some of them lie in bed 24 hours a day, in their own excrement.

In a room of mentally handicapped people, they lie on top of each other. A heap of people, lying like that all day. In another room, a girl is sitting naked on the dirty floor, a scrubbing brush in her hand. She is trying to clean the floor with it. The others, the strong ones, watch her. In the next room one man, one of the strong, is clothing the weak ones and washing them.

Eyes, eyes everywhere. They look at me, looks full of suffering. Behind these eyes is hidden a past, a tragedy. These eyes cry out, "Take me with you."

In this house on the hill, just outside the village of Badiceni in the Republic of Moldova, live 436 people. It is a remnant of whatwas once the Soviet Union. These individuals, sent from every corner of the land, simply didn't exist, were shut away and forgotten...

I dedicate this work to Olia Babara, Natasa Coberman, Viorica Girla, Fiodov Hanganu, Masa Hanganu, Jou Pietrosan, Petrovica Popsoi, Nicolaie Safir, Eujenia Serioja, Boris Ugiov, Vieceslav Uglov, Simeon Wienstine and the 424 others with them.

A revolution without justice
New York I love you
Not your house
We will never forget
Between hope and fear