Something Within a Gaze
New Delhi, India
November 2004

Photographer:
E.K.Schafhauser

Labores both men and women carry heavy loads of bricks, mortar, dirt, and rebar upon their heads, up three flights of stairs. One person carries the load to a stair landing and transfers the weight to the next person. Drops of sweat mix with the mortar. The mortar then cements the bricks to one another and a building is constructed. With precision and little conversation this work goes on all over India by millions of hands, feet, legs, and on the backs, and atop the heads of laborers. Entire groups of families that work on the construction encamp at the base of the building. Smells of food mix with the odor of clay dust as the children of the laborers run and play among the stacks of bricks and piles of gravel. In the middle of the flow of work, a laborer pauses to gently ask with an open hand gesture to his chest for his picture to be taken. Something in his gaze speaks to the heart.