ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Many of us are fascinated by huge ships crossing the oceans, seemingly defying the element water, but most of us don't know what happens to them when their time of use has expired. I visited Gadani Ship Breaking Yard in the South of Pakistan in 2018, the second biggest of its kind in Asia. Like the building of a ship, its dismantling is the reverse process, mostly manual work under harsh conditions and high risks for safety and health of the workers. The scenery in Gadani with ship after ship lined up on the shore in different stages of decay under the scorching sun, made me think of our tendency to take not only provisions of nature but also of the man made world for granted, without asking where things come from nor what and where they will be in the future. It reminded me that the man made world is the result of the extraction of scarce natural resources and their transformation under toil and sweat. We should deal with these resources and products carefully and be aware that nothing disappears just because it is out of our sight. Ship breaking is a hard and dirty, but reasonable business in times where circular economy models are becoming ever more important. And like the building of a ship, the dismantling is a matter of hard labour that needs to be honored.

AUTHOR
Dr. Alamir is a political scientist by education and has been working in security policy and international development contexts for more than twenty years. In the wake of numerous business and private travels to Europe, Asia and Africa, she developed a keen interest in photojournalism, people and landscape photography. Around 2010, she assumed a more ambitious approach to photography and has been working to improve by professional standards ever since. Since 2017, she has won several honorable mentions in international photo competitions, among others several honorable mentions of the International Monoawards and the 1st prize (Discovery of the Year) 2019 of the Tokyo International Foto Awards.

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