Photograph of migrant waste-picker children who showed me their secret way up the burning landfill. With childhood being spent chasing broken glass bottles down the garbage mountain and learning to pick plastics with resale value from an early age, children of untitled migrants lose their childhood to the landfill. The Bhalaswa landfill, Delhi has been burning for 3 months episodically due to severe heat wave in Delhi and temperatures soaring to 118 degree Fahrenheit. The photo highlights the urgency for climate action and the toxic relationship waste pickers share with landfill.
Payal Kakkar (b. 1975) is a self-taught artist using the camera as an activist tool that blurs the lines between documentary and art photography.The 2018 Kerala floods were a wake-up call and pushed her to study the human impact on ecosystems. Since then, she has used her photographic practice to have a more immediate impact on conservation efforts, often working alongside environmental and community activists. Her environmental photographs focus on landscapes impacted by human activity, exploring the impact of extraction and over-consumption on the communities who live there.
