Indonesia, 18 April 2020 The body of a suspected coronavirus victim, wrapped in yellow infectious waste plastic bags and wrappers, lies on the patient's deathbed awaiting a body bag in a hospital in Indonesia. The wrapping of the patient, which takes two nurses a full hour to complete through three layers of plastic and nine times of disinfection, is intended to suppress the spread of coronavirus. As mandated by the Indonesian Ministry of Health, the wrapping of the body is a standard procedure for every suspected, comorbid, and positive confirmed COVID-19 deaths. This process continues until today. As is the case with most victims, family members were not allowed to say goodbye. After the image was published by National Geographic, the image sparked denial and uproar across social media. Many who saw the image declared it to be a set up intended to spread fear. By the end of the year, 563 medical workers in Indonesia have perished due to the pandemic, with the country’s coronavirus toll reaching over 800,000 cases and 20,000 deaths.
A storm brews outside a window in Jakarta, April 29, 2020.
Mortuary staff sprays a plastic-wrapped coffin with a disinfectant, April 18, 2020. The corpse and the coffin must be wrapped with plastic wrappers and disinfected in every stage in order to suppress the spread of the virus.
Rorotan Public Cemetery in Cilincing, North Jakarta, is one of the newest COVID-19 mass burial sites in Jakarta. Over 3,000 graves and counting have been used to occupy the 8-acre size cemetery. Graveyards are designated based on religion, the majority of which being Muslim and Christians. As of mid-July 2021, Indonesia has officially been declared the epicenter of COVID-19 in Asia, after Indonesia’s daily infection rate surpasses India. Sunday, July 18, 2021.
An ambulance staff, with the help of gravediggers, finish burying the plastic-wrapped casket of a COVID-19 victim in the Christian grave site of Rorotan Public Cemetery in Cilincing, North Jakarta, Sunday, July 18, 2021. The cemetery, sized about 8 acres, is a newly designated site of mass burial for COVID-19 victims. As of mid-July 2021, Indonesia has officially been declared the epicenter of COVID-19 in Asia, after Indonesia’s daily infection rate surpasses India.
Men from the village of Sjuru construct a new jeu (longhouse) in Sjuru, at the last stage where the nipa palm roofs are about to be assembled to cover the new longhouse, June 12, 2015. Asmat jeu’s can last 5 years at a cycle, after such period they will build another one in the facing direction of the river, and destroy the older longhouse. When headhunting was rife in the ‘60s, many of Asmat longhouses were burned by the Indonesian government, as decision-making regarding headhunting raids are made in the jeu. There is to date no photographic evidence of such events, although the Asmat who witnessed it verbally report such occurrence.
Mortuary staff sprays a plastic-wrapped coffin with a disinfectant, April 18, 2020. The corpse and the coffin must be wrapped with plastic wrappers and disinfected in every stage in order to suppress the spread of the virus.
Paustina Fetomor (R) takes charge of the Em Tem, a small house built as a symbol of a mother’s womb, as the parents bringing their child through the Em Tem brings the child out for baptism, July 1, 2016. The baptism is a merge of Asmat culture and Catholicism, as brought forward by Fr. Vincent Cole. The Em Tem symbolizes the entrance of the child to the world and later delivered by a woman (symbolized by Fetomor), continued by naming the children with Christian names, and baptising the children with forest water. In all of Asmat, the following baptism process can only be seen in Sa-Er with Fr. Vincent Cole.
The dat spirit masks (front to back) Kur, Bo, Kayir, Jut and Osakat, Pas, and manimar Hamtar emerge from the jungle in the jipae resurrection feast in Kapi, July 23, 2015. They are representations of deceased members of the family or an ancestor. Once an ancestor is called forth to return among the people, they will never to feature again in future jipae feasts. The dat’s masks are exchanged between clans in the jeu (longhouse), for men from each clan to wear. They will spend the night with the villagers, mostly dancing, before symbolically return to safan (Asmat for heaven) the following morning.
Women from the village of Bayun returns from the forest at sundown after collecting firewood, October 6, 2013.
A man carries his dugout canoe on the mudbanks of River Yerep after a day of hunting and gathering, a man carries his canoe back to his house in the village of Jakapis, July 10, 2015. As it is in the middle of a dry season in Asmat, villagers have varying preference in parking their canoes. Jakapis is one of the furthermost village in Asmat. Reachable in 6 hours by a 40 horsepower fibreboat (due to the upstream to the foothills of the mountain area), Jakapis is one of the most neglected village in all of Asmat. Whereas most of Asmat could speak Bahasa Indonesia, Jakapis villagers do not speak at all if not speak a very broken version.
An Asmat man shoots his arrow towards the Kaigar settlement in Agats, to avenge the death of Elias Firim - a village elder from Er - after he was beaten to death by a few drunk people from the Kaigar, May 12, 2015. Kaigar is another Papuan ethnic group from the Casuarina Coast that, despite culture similarities, do not identify with the Asmat. Although traditionally Asmat villages have rivalries among themselves (historically lead to bloody feuds), in this particular time the Asmat are united together to attack the Kaigar. Revenge for the Asmat must be done collectively, even though the culprits have been detained. The police and the military are involved, as they try to pacify in vain. After the military threatened to send Kopassus Special Forces, the fighting stopped.
Villagers in Kapi tosses ‘red fruit’ (buah sanap) towards the manimar named 'Hamtar' from the Amnes clan during the Jipae resurrection feast, July 22, 2015. As manimar arrives in the village, the children will then playfully throw the manimar the fruits. The wearer is protected in the mask-basket. The manimar in a jipae feast represents an orphan boy. According to legend, the orphan boy starts from stealing food from the village, and develops his cunning skills. As he wears the mask, he scares women out so that the women drop the food they gather in the forest. This trick is then revealed by the men of the village, who then agreed with the manimar to keep his secret to the trick and that orphans should not be left alone.
The settlers of Agats attempt to extinguish the fire that affected over 80 heads of family and family members combined. The fire on May 25th 2015 in Agats is the biggest conflagration in the history of Asmat. It’s the third time the fire took place at the very same site, this time the biggest yet. Happening just a day after the Pentecost, theories from the people include that of the fire being the “fire of the Holy Spirit”, or that a phyton - the most feared animal among the Asmat - fell off the roof from the Regent’s office showing bad omen.
The settlers of Agats in Yos Sudarso Street market area try to extinguish the fire in Agats central market, 25 May 2015. The fire consumes over 60 standing-on-stilts structures (kiosks, houses, and warehouses combined) belonging to mostly traders in Agats.
Muslim settlers who live near the site of the fire in Agats look on as the fire slowly dissipate throughout the morning, 26 May 2015. The fire in Agats is the biggest conflagration in the history of Asmat. Although the fire did not result in any casualties, the damage and loss from it reach hundreds and thousands of dollars equivalent. The local Regency of Asmat as of today have rather claimed the land as state land (as it had been complicitly planned to clear the area to build a recreational space), which angered the victims of the fire.
Zacharias Firim, a man from Er, embellished in lime dance in the jeu (longhouse) in Er celebrating the last segment of the Ji Mi, an Asmat feast signifying friendship, February 10, 2015. This particular feast, however, was subsidised by the local government to push the Er inhabitants to run it. Unlike traditional feasts where the idea of arranging a feast comes from contact with ancestors in the spirit world, or to pacify an ancestor’s spirits, or to follow the cycle of the growth of the sago tree, this feast takes place from promised money. When the government who administered the feast came, the money promised to Er villagers were not fully brought in, leading to disappointments among the villagers.
Fireflies fly around a pohon bintang (Indonesian for ‘star tree’), often found by the riverbanks of River Siretsj, Atsk, 25 July 2014. People say the lights emitted from the fireflies resemble those of Christmas lights.
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Jakarta, Indonesia
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Joshua Irwandi

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Joshua Irwandi is a documentary photographer and a National Geographic Explorer based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Irwandi has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Exeter, and pursued graduate studies in photojournalism and documentary photography at the London College of Communication. While working in West Papua, Indonesia, Irwandi was embedded as museum staff at the Asmat Museum and focused on a long-term project on the Asmat people. His project “Not A Blank Canvas’” was awarded the National Geographic Society storytelling grant in 2021.

Irwandi’s work is part of the Forhanna Foundation Fund for Young Talent and National Geographic Society’s COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists grants. He was exhibited at Breda Photo Festival in the Netherlands. One of his images, “The Human Cost of COVID-19,” sparked controversy in Indonesia when it went viral after publication by National Geographic. In 2021, he was selected as one of the speakers for the National Geographic Society’s Storytellers Summit. Recently, he was awarded the 2021 World Press Photo Award in General News, Grand Prize winner for Lucie Foundation, and selected as a finalist of The Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography, among several other awards.

Irwandi’s work has been featured in National Geographic, NHK, The Times of London, The Globe and Mail, CNN, TIME and The Guardian.

 

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