Back to the seaAlessio AndreaniENIT

The beginning

Pakistan, 2014. Where everything else started.

I was there for work: I was meant to photograph the plants. Between one floor and the next, I took these.

Four places, in the order I walked through them: cotton, sewing, tanning, steel. Closed places, where almost nobody gets in and the work shows on people’s bodies. I wasn’t looking for anything: I just kept shooting while I did my job.

Way in

The aisle between two rows of spinning frames; at the far end, two men stand looking at the camera.
01

Cotton

Women in white veils sort raw cotton, arms deep in a mountain of fibre.
02
A man bends over the spinning machine, along a row of spindles running to the end of the shed.
03
A man in a white shirt stands beside the machinery, looking at the camera.
04
A worker watches the big rollers of yarn turning.
05
A man works at a loom; behind him, other workers bent over the yarn.
06
Two men crouch in front of a backlit machine, among the reels.
07
Two men stretch a length of fabric fresh off the machine.
08
Two men in profile work at a cutting machine.
09
A man behind three presses; in front of him, rows of black soles lined up.
10

Stitching

In a shoe workshop, a woman in a white veil smiles from behind her sewing machine; other workers around her.
11
A man in a yellow shirt cuts leather at his bench; behind him, the rest of the floor.
12
A masked worker looks up from his machine; behind him, more men along the line.
13
A man spreads a black hide on the bench, blade in hand.
14

The tannery

Two men sit on stacks of raw hides in the tannery yard.
15
A dim shed with a flooded floor; at the far end, figures working in the light.
16
Beside the tanning drums, a man standing and a boy sitting on the edge.
17
A group of workers among the tanning drums, their T-shirts stained with dye.
18
A man standing beside a huge drum, white foam across the floor.
19

The steelworks

The nave of a steelworks; a man walks alone towards the camera between the machines.
20
Backlit in the smoke, three figures work at the end of the shed.
21
Two men, seen from behind, at an old machine under a big barred window.
22
Three men carry a ladle of molten metal together, the glowing red between them.
23
A man leans over the pour: incandescent metal and white smoke.
24
The ladle tips and pours the molten metal; behind it, a man's face in the smoke.
25
Two men guide the incandescent pour with a bar.
26

Way out

A rickshaw full of women and children pulls away down a dusty road.
27
The hours in betweenTen years later, still in black and white. The hours between a sunrise and a sunset.Keep going