Chittagong Shipbreaker — Bangladesh Yard Portrait
167.06 €
A shipbreaker at work on the Chittagong ship breaking beach in Bangladesh — cutting torch in hand, standing on the hull of a 200,000-tonne VLCC being broken by hand and flame, the scale of the ship overwhelming the human figure.
Description
The Chittagong ship breaking yards are the world’s most active ship demolition site — approximately 60% of the world’s end-of-life large vessels are broken here by hand labour in conditions of significant occupational hazard. The documentary portrait of the ship breaking worker is as much about scale as it is about the individual: this image was made from a position on the beach below and to the side of a worker standing on the hull of a Very Large Crude Carrier being sectioned by acetylene cutting torch. The ship’s hull — still the orange of its anti-fouling paint — rises 20 metres above the beach, and the worker stands near the top of this section, the cutting torch creating a shower of sparks that catches the afternoon light. Shot on a 70-200mm telephoto at f/5.6, the worker’s small figure against the enormous hull communicates the scale.
