The Hands Behind Durga
The artists whose hands turn clay, straw and imagination into the face of the goddess.
View Series →
About this series
Photographer’s note
Life Beneath the Smoke is a documentary series exploring childhood inside a brickfield in Bengal, India. Amid stacks of handmade bricks, dust, smoke and the rhythm of daily labour, children create their own small world. They play, laugh, watch, learn and dream—finding moments of childhood within an environment shaped by work and survival. This series is not simply about hardship. It is about how children experience life, family and childhood in a place that most of us rarely see from the inside. Through these photographs, I try to look beyond the brickfield itself—to the faces, relationships, gestures and quiet moments that reveal the human story behind the industry.
