Alive in Wonderland

This body of work talks about life in Kodaikanal, India, where Unilever's thermometer factory produced 163M units while dumping 7.4 tons of mercury-laced glass scrap yearly into forests, contaminating the hill town.

From 1984 to 2001, a Unilever thermometer factory in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, dumped over 7 tons of mercury-laced glass into the surrounding forests, contaminating the land and water. This invisible pollution has left a lasting impact on the environment and the health of local communities. Over 45 factory workers have died, and many more live with chronic illnesses.

I began photographing Kodaikanal with support from the Magnum Foundation’s Photography and Social Justice Fellowship. My work began by photographing around the abandoned factory, collecting lichen for mercury testing, and building relationships with affected families. I have also recorded testimonies, tracked the ongoing remediation, and created a visual archive of the changing landscape.

Between 2019 and 2020, over 400 trees were felled inside the factory grounds as part of the company’s remediation efforts, despite objections from environmentalists who warned this would increase mercury runoff and damage the fragile ecosystem bordering the Kodaikanal Wildlife Sanctuary. In 2024, I returned with a full-spectrum camera and infrared flash to visualize what cannot be seen with the naked eye, capturing the site as the factory was being dismantled to make way for a hotel, a transition that raises new concerns about the adequacy of cleanup and the future of this land.

The goal is to create a work that holds the memory of this environmental disaster. Something people can sense but not fully grasp, preserving the stories and landscapes shaped by invisible harm.

Alive in Wonderland seeks to make visible the unseen and to remember what lingers in the land and in the lives of those who remain.