As a result of Indonesia geographically located directly on top of the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, the country is home to over 100 active volcanoes. On October 26, 2010, Indonesiaâ??s most active volcano for the first time erupted with an uncharacteristic direct vertical blast of hot ashes reaching a kilometer and a half into the sky. Mount Merapi or Gunung Merapi (Mountain of Fire) as it is locally referred to, is an active stratovolcano usually known to be non-explosive and attributed with slow eruptions since the 1500s and as it still did in 2006. The explosion, a day immediately after the experts raised the alert level to its highest, warning the surrounding population to move to safer grounds, was still unexpected as it was atypical of the behavior of â??fire mountainâ??. Ten days after itâ??s initial eruption, a bigger and deadly blast was witnessed taking lives even outside denoted danger zones and wiping out hamlets and surrounding villages within the path of its pyroclastic flows.
Award-winning Indonesian photographer Kemal Jufri's career started in 1996 when he joined Agence-France Presse (AFP). He left AFP two years later and worked as a photo contributor for Asiaweek until the magazine closed down in 2001. Since then he has worked as a freelance photographer across Asia for major publications, including Newsweek, TIME, The New York Times, STERN and Der Spiegel. His photographs of the Mount Merapi eruptions in Central Java at the end of 2010 won him a total of seven awards from five prestigious International Photojournalism competitions including the World Press Photo, Picture of The Year International, NPPA Best of Photojournalism, China International Press Photo Contest and Prix De La Photographie Paris (PX3).
