The Final Embrace

Ten years after the Rana Plaza disaster killed over 1,100 garment workers, little has changed.

Warning: This story contains graphic photographs. Viewer discretion is advised.

In the early morning hours of April 25, 2013, amid the ruins of a collapsed garment factory, Bangladeshi photographer and activist Taslima Akhter discovered this horrific scene.

“I found a couple embracing each other in the rubble,” Taslima wrote me in 2013. “The blood from the eyes of the man ran like a tear.”

Photograph by Taslima Akhter

“When I saw the couple, I couldn’t believe it,” Taslima added. “Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me.”

My heart sank when I first saw Taslima’s photo on Facebook. I immediately felt it was something the rest of the world should see (I was the international picture editor at TIME in 2013). We published her heartbreaking image on TIME.com and it went viral, becoming the most-viewed photo in TIME.com history.

I had met Taslima earlier that year at the Chobi Mela photography festival in Dhaka, where she showed me her long-term project on garment workers. I was struck by her passion and determination. The photos were gritty, revealing — it was clear that Taslima had a deep connection with the people in her images and an intimate knowledge of the plight of garment workers. The opposite of parachute photojournalism.

After the tragedy, we assigned Taslima to keep working on the story. Along with TIME writer, Krista Mahr, they followed up with victims families and continued searching for the identity of the couple in her infamous photograph. These are spreads from TIME International.

I asked Taslima for her thoughts on the ten year anniversary of the tragedy.

“Emotions have changed a lot over the past ten years and have become faded. But the photos from the killing have not been forgotten,” she wrote. “The families of the deceased and injured members still suffer from physical and mental wounds.”

While the garment industry has changed some and there’s been a decrease in deaths, wages and conditions have not improved. “Bangladesh's garment workers are still living an unbearable life on only $75 per month, which is very difficult to survive,” she added.

Taslima and other activists are advocating for a global day of remembrance, similar to May Day or International Women’s Day, “to ensure worker safety and rights and to create unity among workers around the world.”

“The value of these workers' lives were neglected by the owners, the government, and the buyers and brands in the harshest and most ruthless ways,” Taslima said. “Responsibility for the Rana Plaza killings and the poor conditions of garment workers must be taken.”

Taslima is currently the President of the Bangladesh Garment Workers Solidarity, an organization for the rights of garment workers, as well as a faculty member at Pathshala South Asian Media Institute.

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Taslima was not the only photographer who captured the haunting scene. Suman Paul was a student at the renowned Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in 2013. He first heard of the tragic news from his mother, then rushed to the scene.

Photograph by Suman Paul

“It was my first experience of taking photos of a massive accident,” Suman told me. “I saw rows of dead bodies, [heard the] wails of trapped people, shouting and begging for help. I took photos, trying to control the grief inside me.”

Suman witnessed rescuers discovering the bodies just as the sun began to rise (the light is notably different in his version, streaming from above — Taslima used a flash). He also captured what appears to be other bodies in the foreground. “The scene shook my conscience,” he said.

Bangladeshi photographer and filmmaker Ismail Ferdous also has a version of the image that appears in The New York Times Op-Doc, “The Deadly Cost of Fashion.”

The identities of the two people in the photograph are still a mystery. Taslima believes they’ve become representative of millions of garment workers, “urging us to remember the dead and to fight for the living.”