Projects:

•  Portraits of Unorganised Workers in Karnataka, India. Photos 2014 – 15, Bangalore and Karnataka, India. © Sabina von Kessel
  2015

• IINSIDE/OUT, Life of Children inside and outside of gated communities in Bangalore. Photos 2010 – 2012, Yelahanka NT, Kenchenahalli, North Bangalore.
• INSIDE/OUT, Children of Migrant Workers
• Life in Utopia, Summer in Bavaria, Germany. Photos 2013 – 2016, Munich and surroundings.
• Nicole, Life without Money, homeless in Hamburg
• How would you like to implement the Sustainable Development Goals in Hamburg?

Portraits of Unorganised Workers

The series of workers portraits was photographed for GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) to give the campaign ‘Social Security for Unorganised Workers’ a human face and to connect the participants with the brand.

When I went with my camera inside a factory, on a construction side, on a market or on a field, the workers called out to me and begged me to take a photo of them. Once I did – they thanked me. It was like: Finally, somebody looks at me and recognises me and my work.

This is for you – workers in India – with huge thanks for your kind participation with that strange German woman, who suddenly appeared in your factory, on your construction site and on the field. Sabina

Background: Prevailing social security benefits such as health insurance in India are restricted to workers in the formal sector. However, about 93% of the entire workforce accounting for close to 400 Million people works in the informal sector. The overwhelming majority of these unorganised workers do not have access to adequate and reliable social security.
For the photo bank of GIZ and for the brand campaign for Single-Window-Service, Social Security for Unorganised Workers.

Inside/Out, Life of Children inside and outside of gated communities in Bangalore. Photos 2010 – 2012, Yelahanka, Bangalore. Photos © Sabina von Kessel

A photo essay on children inside and outside of gated communities in Bangalore. Children inside gated communities and children “on the other side of the wall” never intermingle with each other. Migrant construction worker and their children live often in front of the gated communities in tin sheet huts, while construction work is still going on. Within the direct neighbourhood children are often only seperated by a wall: on one side they are splashing in pools, on the other side children don’t have access to water and other basic facilities like toilets or bathrooms. Older sisters and brothers watch younger siblings, while both parents are working on the construction site, and have no access to education. The third group of children lives in the peri-urban, a fast changing, hybrid landscape of fragmented urban and rural characteristic.
Exhibited at a conference on urban development in Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

New gated communities are mushrooming in Bangalore. Migrant workers, women, men, children, often from Bihar, live in tin sheet huts near to the construction site. There is nothing for the workers, which badly effects the children: no hygiene, no protection, no playground, no school.

Coming from India for a few weeks to spend the summer holidays in Bavaria, Germany, seemed to me like a trip into a strange utopian country. Even in the center of Munich people enjoy hot summer days and dive in the cold river Isar with its cristal clear water. The Bavarian lakes shimmering in surreal colours attract people in thousands.
Photos © Sabina von Kessel, 2013 – 15

a name=”How would you like to implement the Sustainable Development Goals in Hamburg?”

A campaign for the SDGs 2030 in Hamburg. A collage with citizen portraits in front of the city’s background with personal statements of how the protagonists would like to implement the Sustainable Development Goals. Poster campaign for Sustainable Development Goals.

Photography and Design: Sabina von Kessel, 2016/17

In cooperation with SID, Society for International Development, Hamburg.