The invisibles among us

Every day we encounter many people in the streets. Each has their own story. The stories will be similar in the broadest sense. We grow up, many of us migrate to find work, we give birth and raise our children, we die, and the cycle goes on.

Yet we cannot claim to “understand” in any detail the lives of those that we encounter. Shippers, factory workers, street vendors and the myriad of occupations all have their own lived experiences. So in an important sense most people we encounter in the street are “invisible”. you do not necessarily pay attention to such invisibles because your own life is overwhelmed with information and concerns. You, as much as myself, will mostly interact with this vendor and that shipper in their roles and not in their broader lives. If we have the time, we will likely spend it following celebrities, politicians, scholars, even dangerous criminals, whose actions and thinking may have larger social The implications that affect the lives of the ‘every man’.

But by looking deep into the lives of these invisibles, trying to depict them, we have found many sparkling stories. They involve both extreme characteristics and can be full of common themes. In all of the stories, there are things to ponder and project on to the wider screen of society. In such stories, we have found important things about how we live as a community, and how we are functioning in society.

This book does not aim to persuade you to show compassion for every “invisible” that you encounter. It is simply a collection of many confidences, that we rarely have time to listen to, from strangers.

This Photobook is done by Labor Rights, which is a good recommendation for readers, The invisibles among us.