Editorial - ‘The Hands That Built This City’ published in Wordt Vervolgd, Amnesty, NL

My photography tells stories of landscapes and of the people who inhabit them - how they came to be there and where they are going. The Hands That Built This City shot in March 2018 and 19 is a photographic story looking at the people who make up the large and growing workforce of the UAE. I am most interested in where the workers live, far away from the cities they are building, in the dusty streets of the labour camps - now their ‘home’. Here there are strictly only male communities who live together in basic accommodation supplied by their employment companies. I was drawn to explore this place because it is a world away from the shiny skyscrapers Dubai is known for; these people are building the ‘City’ for the great wealth and privilege of others. Despite a difficult existence of hard work and little money, I found people brought together and connected by common experience, the plight of of living a daily life without their families with only the bond of friendships for comfort.