On our way to Uttar Pradesh last year, we visited a few brick factories in an attempt to document the families and the conditions in which they existed. Out of the three visited, one allowed us to do so. The owners were quite generous actually, and accepted our presence openly. They invited us for some tea that evening, and arranged for us to do our work in the morning even in their absence.
We arrived as the sun was rising the next morning, and began our photography. The families were mostly from northeastern India and migrated to this region for work. They lived in tiny rooms made with the bricks they produced, enduring endless days of labor. The roofs of these rooms were made of corrugated metal, making them almost unbearably hot... and beyond noisy when it rained.
Under the hot sun they worked, parents alongside their children. These displaced families lacked access to so much many of us perhaps take for granted such as the education for their children, and healthcare for their families. They lived a hand to mouth existence, earning enough each day to barely feed their families and pay their employers for rent and food.
In these two frames we are seeing slavery in its modern form, with countless humans being forced to exchange their labor for the most minimum of existence. I do hope that we will be able to move forward with our interfaith effort in this region, and produce a school for the children of these communities.
