GIRLS, TOMORROW, AND THE EARTH
The protagonists of these photos are little girls from Taisuru village in Suru valley of Kargil, Ladakh, India.
This region of Kargil is remote and cut off from mainland India in several ways — topography, religion, and culture. Life here is crucially linked to the seasons and the relationship of the girls to the land is tactile.
The people in this region are largely Shia muslims who take religious direction from Iran. Women are allowed to show only their faces and hands, and even as girls find ways to sneak in some fashion, the hijab remains a constant.
Like elsewhere in rural India, men leave for better paying jobs in cities, while women tend to the land and their households. During harvest time, women spend days cutting their crops by hand. They take the livestock for grazing over long distances in the summer. Despite the constraints of religion, there is a freedom to the women and a deep bond with the earth that their daughters will inherit from them.
The title is taken from an EE Cummings poem ‘Dive for Dreams’.