The Invisibles

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The Invisibles

We sorround our lives with a variety of tangible things: clothes, toys, houses, furniture, they give help us live our lives and add meaning to that. But, how do we get those things? We don't all sew our clothes, hunt and gather our food, build our furniture or our cars. There are these men, women, and children who work to design, build, or manufacture those things that we use. We would never meet them, but we will wear the clothes they have sewn, eat the food they have grown, drive the cars they have built. More often than not, their work more a labor of love than a work of earning a living. I call them *The Invisibles* - people who touch every aspect of our lives but remain invisible to us. This series tells their story.

Color of life

The Narayangonj and Narsinghdi district is the home of the textile workers whose work involves dying the plain white clothes. Those colored clothes are then sewn into salwar kamiz and other similar clothes. The following pictures are from my short visit of the small home businesses in the Narshingdi area.

Life of rice

When the rice paddy is harvested from the field, the first step is to separate it from its stem. After that they need to be dried thoroughly in the sun before it can be sent to the mills that separate the rice from its husk. In Bangladesh, the drying is usually done under the sun in large open cemented fields called the Chatals. There are small community of migrant workers who live in these Chatals and work tirelessly to dry the rice. The following photographs show a glimpse of their daily lives.