A POISONED PLACE_Caravan Magazine_Dec 2014

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A POISONED PLACE PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEX MASI


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A POISONED PLACE THIRTY YEARS ON FROM THE BHOPAL DISASTER

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEX MASI

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n the early hours of 3 December 1984, clouds of toxic gasses from a runaway chemical reaction started pouring out from a pesticide plant operated by the American multinational Union Carbide in Bhopal. The gasses, many heavier than the surrounding air, stayed close to the ground, and the wind took them southeast, smothering large swathes of the sleeping city. Bhopal was home to approximately 900,000 people at the time; over half a million were exposed to the toxins. By Union Carbide’s count, 3,828 people were killed that night, though other estimates place the number at no lower than eight thousand. The death toll to date is thought to stand at about 25,000. Over 120,000 people still suffer from disorders caused by the disaster, and by industrial pollution at the site, which now stands abandoned. This December marks thirty years since the gas leak, considered the worst industrial disaster in history. Several officers of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary have since been tried and sentenced for their roles in the explosion, and numerous civil and criminal cases against Union Carbide—now owned by the Dow Chemical Company—are still pending before Indian courts. Warren

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Anderson, the chairman and CEO of Union Carbide at the time of the disaster, never answered charges filed against him; he died this September in the United States, which repeatedly denied requests by Indian officials for his extradition. The disaster was extensively documented by reporters, photographers and television crews. The most iconic image of the tragedy remains the photojournalist Pablo Bartholomew’s shot, taken in the days after the explosion, of a dead child partly buried under rubble, its mouth half open as a living hand brushes dirt from its ashen face. Thousands of other disturbing images have emerged from Bhopal since, as photographers have documented the continuing social and physiological impacts of the disaster. The Italian photographer Alex Masi describes those impacts as “Bhopal’s second disaster.” Masi first visited the city in 2009, and returned several times over the next few years to photograph the almost 30,000 people who continue to live around the now abandoned plant. He focuses largely on the many children in these settlements who suffer from severe neurological disorders and physical


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deformities, produced by years of chemical contamination of the soil and water. The photographer’s role in such a situation takes on an almost forensic characteristic. Masi believes that “documentary photography ought to be an active catalyst in promoting awareness, political and juridical change, and in fostering action by individuals, NGOs and governments.” His photographs—scenes from the everyday lives and surroundings of children often on the brink of death—serve as testimony of both past and present injustices. Masi’s images from Bhopal recalls the American photojournalist W Eugene Smith’s work in Japan, where in the early 1970s he documented the effects of toxic pollution from a Chisso Corporation chemical factory on the residents of the town of Minamata, in the country’s south. In December 1971, thirteen years before the Bhopal leak, Smith captured what would become a famous image of a young girl affected by severe mercury poisoning and her mother, titled ‘Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath.’ In Minamata, the debilitating effects of toxic poisoning continue to transcend generations, just as they do in Bhopal where the old Union Carbide complex continues to breed death in its shadow.

above: A boy passes through the colony of Arif Nagar, near New Arif Nagar. opposite page: A girl carries her brother across railway tracks passing through the New Arif Nagar, a colony close to the plant. previous spread: Aadite, aged nine, watches cartoons at his home near the abandoned Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. Aadite suffers from a severe neurological disorder, and malnutrition. His father, Raju, survived the gas leak in 1984 but died in March last year, at the age of 32, due to lung failure. Aadite now lives in a small room with his mother, Lakshmi, who works six days a week as a cleaner to sustain her family. Aadite’s has two sisters— Mayuri, aged 12, and Mahag, aged seven—and a five-year-old brother, Anuj. None of the siblings attend school.

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above: The abandoned control room of the plant. top: Patients wait for Ayurvedic medicines at Sambhavna Clinic, a local NGO that cares for victims of the 1984 disaster. above left: Almost half of the pregnant women exposed to the 1984 gas leak aborted spontaneously. Some of the fetuses are exhibited in a special section of Bhopal’s Gandhi Medical College.

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above: Jars of chemical reagents in the plant’s packaging room. opposite page: A young boy cries for attention inside a makeshift house in Oriya Basti, near the plant.

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above: A girl at play in New Arif Nagar. opposite page top: Patients wait for Ayurvedic medicines at Sambhavna Clinic, a local NGO that cares for victims of the 1984 disaster. opposite page bottom: A boy waits inside his father’s small tailor’s shop, near Oriya Basti.

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above: Children play around an abandoned evaporation pool. opposite page: Asif, a 14-year-old with a severe neurological disorder, stands by the entrance of his home in Arif Nagar.

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