The Chittagong Ship Breaking Yard is the site of the world's largest ship breaking industry and accounts for a fifth of all the steel in Bangladesh. As a photographer I have always been drawn to the industrial, the nobility and danger of work, and the nature of impermanence. My desire was to visit and visually capture the yards where so many large cargo and passenger ships have ended up since 1965. The remoteness of Sitakunda coast and the difficulty of always getting up close to the enormous beasts, and the efficient security made the project a challenge. However in December 2017, I arrived in Chittagong and over several days travelled by local fishing boats. My series of photographs captures the grandeur of steel, ships being picked over and dismantled, at times like the skeleton of a whale washed up on the shore. Images of silence. Images of decay. These ships once carried people and goods between nations, were abuzz with life and stories, and even still they appear monumental. There is an industrial beauty and quietness in the rustic colours of the aged and dying ships. But occasionally too there is the almost shock-like glimpse of a worker dwarfed by a wall of steel. Our sense of mortality is questioned.
