At the height of colonialism, indentured Indian women in the Caribbean were photographed for a thriving postcard industry. Their images enact a struggle—between the imaginations of colonial-era photographers and the real lives of the women behind the portraits.
If there’s an engine that continues to draw millions of workers into the Persian Gulf’s draconian labor regime, it is the middlemen—the underground network of recruitment agents that reaches into every corner of rural South Asia, dangling the possibility of a better life before communities ravaged by neoliberalism.
