This work documents the scars left on the land by illegal gold mining in a small community.. I visited the area to understand how people survive on the margins, and how the environment pays the price for that survival. What I found was a landscape shaped by constant digging, polluted water, unstable ground, and vegetation fighting to grow back.
The people who work here are men trying to earn a living in a place with limited opportunities. Their hands are in the soil every day, washing, panning, and hoping for a small piece of gold that can carry them through. At the same time, the land around them is disappearing. Forests give way to open pits. Clean water becomes brown and acidic. The soil loses its strength. These are signs of a changing climate made worse by human pressure. I made these photographs to show the true cost of this activity, to open a conversation about what is happening to our environment and the people who depend on it. This series sit at the point where survival meets environmental loss, that climate change is here on the ground, shaping daily life and reshaping the future of communities like this one.
