Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • Laborers at a brick factory.
    RANDY OLSON_06569_1071281-3.TIF
  • Laborers at a brick factory.
    RANDY OLSON_06569_1071281-2.TIF
  • Laborers at a brick factory.
    RANDY OLSON_06569_1071281.TIF
  • Laborers at a brick factory.
    RANDY OLSON_06569_1071259.TIF
  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through a huge pile of discarded plastic bottles.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702767.JPG
  • Laborers offload bricks on the banks of the Buriganga River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702806.JPG
  • Laborers offload bricks on the banks of the Buriganga River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702805.JPG
  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through a huge pile of discarded plastic bottles.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702772.JPG
  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through a huge pile of discarded plastic bottles.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702768.JPG
  • Laborers washing their hands at the Visir Fish Factory after hanging their gloves on a rack in Iceland.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7393_1057889.JPG
  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through a huge pile of discarded plastic bottles.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702771.JPG
  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through piles of discarded plastic bottles at a recycling center. Plastic waste and global warming are companion threats. People’s need for clean drinking water increases as temperatures rise. The size of this center in Dhaka is equivalent to three football fields. In the winter when I made this photograph, only one of the football fields was filled with plastic waste. In the summer when everyone drinks more bottled water because of the excessive heat in a Bangladesh summer, all three football fields are filled with plastic waste. The slough next to this informal factory is filled with the overburden that is either shoved away or is blown by the wind into the neighboring watershed.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702769.JPG
  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through a huge pile of discarded plastic bottles.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702770.JPG
  • A laborer at a copper and gold mine wears protective glasses that reflect other workers.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222993.JPG
  • This is the Kireka area just outside Kampala, Uganda.  Most all of these laborers are from Gulu in the north... insecurity with LRA made them move south and accept jobs that are basically breaking rocks so the gravel can be used for construction materials.  The mothers in these families make about 50 cents a day breaking the rocks their husbands haul out of the quarries.
    MM7890_20100326_01487.tif
  • Villagers neighboring the Newmont gold mine perform domestic labor.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222963.TIF
  • A factory laborer uses rice husks to fuel the fire for the bricks.
    RANDY OLSON_06569_1071279.TIF
  • Goldsmiths work in a one-room factory in Kolkata. Child labor is common for the artisanal.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223068.JPG
  • Taxi drive from airport to Norilsk Nickel. When we landed we realized why Russians had not been allowed here. There was a row of nuclear missiles on the horizon as we got off the plane.
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663870.jpg
  • Randy Olson, a photographer on assignment for National Geographic at a gold mine in Ghana.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223065.TIF
  • Workers at Rajesh Exports, the largest gold exporter in the world. They are making jewelry in intricate, ornate designs that appeals to Indian buyers.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223059.JPG
  • Workers at Rajesh Exports, the largest gold exporter in the world.  A thousand people work in a huge building that resembles a prison. 95 percent of them also live in company housing.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223060.TIF
  • Maintenance workers tend to a gigantic wheel of a truck that hauls hundred of tons of waste rock at a gold mining operation.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222990.JPG
  • A teenager works with miners sluicing for gold at an improvised, illegal mine.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223016.JPG
  • Workers smelt nickel in heavy polluting, antiquated factories.
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663869.jpg
  • Sleeping children who spend their nights sweeping dust looking for gold bits to recover in India.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223055.TIF
  • A man fixes mining equipment in a muddy pit in a search for gold in Borneo. Such operations leave a devastated landscape and miners test high for mercury earning about $5US a day.
    Gold_20060421_01818.tif
  • A man fixes mining equipment in a muddy pit in a search for gold in Borneo. Such operations leave a devastated landscape and miners test high for mercury earning about $5US a day.
    Gold_20060421_01781.tif
  • An artisanal goldsmith's workshop in Kolkata where jewelry in crafted for adornment in India.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222982.JPG
  • A painting of gold mining and production hangs on a wall at the mine.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223012.TIF
  • Headlights illuminate the small passage for illegal mining in an underground shaft on Ashanti Gold land.
    GOLDGHANA_20060925_01190.tif
  • A young boy peers out a window protected with a grate. He joins others who sweep streets at night to sort the dust looking for gold bits to recover.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223066.TIF
  • Delicate and intricate pieces areproduced by artisan workers who produce mass-market jewelry. They work and live in a goldsmith's workshop in Kolkata.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222984.TIF
  • Goldsmiths live and work in a one-room factory in Kolkata. The men make ornate necklaces that are highly valued during wedding season. Artisanal craftsmen are often from the same village and share food and sleeping spaces in cramped quarters.
    MM7339_20080515_03297.tif
  • Men work on mining equipment in a muddy pit while searching for gold in Borneo. Such operations leave a devastated landscape and miners test high for mercury earning about $5US a day.
    Gold_20060421_01868.tif
  • Mass-market jewelry takes shape at a goldsmith's workshop in Kolkata. The delicate handwork is intricate with inlays and designs.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222983.JPG
  • Migrant goldmine workers gather in the evening in a store with wares in Kalimantan.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222959.JPG
  • Mass-market gold jewelry takes shape at a goldsmith's workshop in Kolkata.
    MM7339_20080515_03454.tif
  • Gold miners in Kalimantan where one takes a smoke break from the hard work.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223001.JPG
  • The mud speckled face of a miner pops up while he is repairing a sluice box in a muddy pit of a gold mining operation.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223000.JPG
  • Illegal miners sort rock while huddled at their shaft on Ashanti Gold land.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223013.JPG
  • Headlights illuminate the small passage for illegal mining in an underground shaft on Ashanti Gold land.
    GOLDGHANA_20060925_01214.tif
  • Explorers on remote Putorana Plateau
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663863-8.jpg
  • Explorers on remote Putorana Plateau
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663863-3.jpg
  • Gold miners bathe on the riverbanks of the Pra River. Heavy metals pollute the amalgam pond that they wade and wash in exploring them to high levels of mercury.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223020.JPG
  • A steel worker at the Wuhan iron and steel plant.
    RANDY OLSON_WuhanIronSteel.tif
  • Explorers on remote Putorana Plateau
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663863-19.jpg
  • Explorers on remote Putorana Plateau
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663863-15.jpg
  • Explorers on remote Putorana Plateau
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663863-7.jpg
  • Explorers on remote Putorana Plateau
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663863-6.jpg
  • Mass-market jewelry takes shape at a goldsmith's workshop in Kolkata. Workers make ornate pieces that will be sold in jewelry stores.  India is the top gold consumer with buyers collecting for investment as much as adornment.
    MM7339_20080515_03227.tif
  • Men work on mining equipment in a muddy pit in a search for gold in Borneo. Such operations leave a devastated landscape and miners test high for mercury earning about $5US a day.
    Gold_20060421_01790.tif
  • Illegal gold mining on the riverbanks of the Pra River where the landscape is destroyed by crowds digging for precious metal.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223026.JPG
  • Explorers on remote Putorana Plateau
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663863-13.jpg
  • Illegal mining in an underground shaft on Ashanti Gold land.
    GOLDGHANA_20060925_01280.tif
  • Woman in fish processing plant is:<br />
Nadezhda.
    MM7593_20080806_05057.tif
  • Salmon peek out from containers where caviar is produced in a fishing plant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260951.JPG
  • Bright orange caviar in production area of a Russian fish processing plant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260924.JPG
  • Explorers on remote Putorana Plateau
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663863-4.jpg
  • Two men use lung power to top off their inflatable raft.
    RANDY OLSON_06396_673186.jpg
  • Fish plant worker in a fish processing plant in Oktyabrski, Kamchatka, the town where Soviets built two of the largest fish plants in Russia.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260953.TIF
  • Caviar production area in a fish processing plant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260923.JPG
  • Portrait of a gold miner in Kalimantan wearing protective clothing but his face is caked with splashed mud.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222996.TIF
  • Women from the rural countryside learn to be maids for the newly wealthy class. They learn to cook and iron at the Fuping Vocational Skills Training School. Li responds to flying grease in one of the cooking classes.<br />
<br />
Since opening up its economy in 1978 and moving toward a market economy, China has lifted about 400 million people out of poverty, according to the World Bank. But this has led to wide income inequalities that the Communist Party is trying to address through its notion of a “harmonious society” that has a more even distribution of the benefits of recent decades of speedy economic growth. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories. Men often get construction jobs while women work in cheap-labor factories. So many migrants leave their homes looking for work they overburden the rail system. In the Hunan province, 52 people were trampled to death in the late 1990s when 10,000 migrants were herded onto a freight train. To stem the flow of migrants, officials in Hunan and Sichuan have placed restrictions on the use of trains and buses by rural people. In some cities, the migrants almost outnumber the residents. One young girl told National Geographic, “All the young people leave our village. I’m not going back. Many can’t even afford a bus ticket and hitchhike to Beijing.” Overall, the Chinese government has tacitly supported migration as means of transforming China from a rural-based economy to an urban-based one.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-5.tif
  • A worker in a steel mill in Huaxi village.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176506.JPG
  • A Pygmy girl does chores for a wealthy Bantu family in Beni. <br />
<br />
This is the daughter of Kenge-known because of a book, "The Forest People." Kenge is possibly the most famous pygmy.  His daughter was traded off to a wealthy Bantu family when the father had a good job with GIC and his wife needed help with the kids.  During the war, the family moved to Beni, because it was a little more secure than Epulu. They brought their pygmy with them.  She does various chores around the house-laundry, sweeping, mopping, washing children.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7209_976475.TIF
  • A miner works his way through a jumble of logs in an underground mine.
    RANDY OLSON_MM6689_702538.JPG
  • Ugandan men use a fire setting system for breaking rock in the Kireka area just outside Kampala.  Most all of these folks are from Gulu in the north. Insecurity with the LRA made them move south and accept jobs that are basically breaking rocks so gravel can be used in construction materials.
    MM7890_20100326_02310.tif
  • Workers ride an elevator up as they come off shift working to seal off a mercury mine. It is a 500 year old problem that has polluted underground water in Idrija and surrounding areas although closed in 1995. It was the second largest in the world. Mercury can be used to extract silver and gold, therefore the silver and gold-rush motivated mercury mining. The mining industry brought science, technological advancements, and industry to this mountainous region but it also created considerable medical problems and health hazard due to its toxicity.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7139_985667-2.TIF
  • Miners traveled underground in Idrija, Slovenia for 500 years to mine mercury.  Now with little need for the metal, the mine closed leaving an environmental nightmare. A small crew works to fill in the tunnels to keep heavy metals run off from polluting groundwater. Men take showers after their shift and hang their clothes on hooks.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7139_985667.TIF
  • Coal dust flies up as a bulldozer scoops up coal and miners shovel by hand at a mine in West Virginia. The Gordon Justice & Mac Hauling coal mine is small compared to massive mountaintop removal mining operations.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023664.jpg
  • Mountaintop removal involves miners setting up explosive charges at a small coal mine operating in West Virginia. The top of the mountain is blown off with sticks of dynamite in order to obtain a small seam of coal.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_1023663.jpg
  • A worker steps over sections of a pipeline being stockpiled near Sobolevo.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260931.JPG
  • A worker climbs a ladder beside sections of a pipeline being stockpiled near Sobolevo.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260928.JPG
  • A workers hangs onto a rope at a fish plant in Oktyabrsky.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260926.JPG
  • Wokers at Rajesh Exports, the largest gold exporter in the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1223058.TIF
  • Poor villagers clean the Sasakwa Lodge in the Grumeti Reserves.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7314_985614.JPG
  • Poor villagers plant grass at Sasakwa Lodge.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7314_985613.JPG
  • A Pygmy woman does chores for a wealthy family in Beni. <br />
She is the daughter of Kenge-known because of a book, "The Forest People." Kenge is possibly the most famous pygmy.  His daughter was traded off to a wealthy Bantu family
    RANDY OLSON_MM7209_976477.TIF
  • A Pygmy woman mops the floor and does a multitude of chores for a wealthy family in Beni.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7209_976476.TIF
  • A mechanic works on the engine of an old car.
    RANDY OLSON_MM6879_708216.TIF
  • Illegal miners scraping for gold on the riverbanks of the Pra River outside of Prestea, Ghana, Africa.
    GOLDGHANA_20060925_02104.tif
  • Bulldozers fill trucks with excess rock at a small mountaintop removal site in Man, West Virginia, where a small crew is mining coal in a site in Logan County that was left by a large coal company as rubble. Mine operator Gordon Justice said, "One man's trash is another man's treasure."<br />
<br />
Large mining operations are only visible from the air, although coal and debris are removed using enormous earth-moving machines known as draglines that stand 22 stories tall and can hold 24 compact cars in its bucket. The machines can cost up to $100 million, but are favored by coal companies because they can do the work of hundreds of employees. A small operation like this one can keep 17 employees working for five years and making good wages.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_996257.jpg
  • A workman on a flatbed truck unloads a large storage tank at a gas drilling site. The petroleum industry has been exploring for oil and gas in Wyoming for over 135 years. In 1884 the first oil well was drilled southeast of Lander.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705782.jpg
  • A mining employee works around a large piece digging equipment used at Black Thunder, a coal surface mine. Located in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, the dragline bucket used at the mine holds 170 cubic yards of coal that is extracted, processed, then loaded onto trains. Almost 100 million tons of low sulpher coal is shipped from this surface mine to power plants.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705777.jpg
  • Women from the rural countryside learn skills at the Fuping Vocational Skills Training School to be maids for the newly wealthy comfort class. Since opening up its economy in 1978 and moving toward a market economy, China has lifted about 400 million people out of poverty, but this has led to wide income inequalities. The Communist Party is trying to address this through its notion of a “harmonious society” that has a more even distribution of the benefits of recent decades of speedy economic growth. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. According to Chinese government statistics, the current number of migrant workers in China is estimated at 120 million (approximately 9% of the population). China is now experiencing the largest mass migration of people from the countryside to the city in history. An estimated 230 million Chinese (2010), roughly equivalent to two-thirds the population of the U.S., have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years. About 13 million more join them every year—an expected 250 million by 2012, and 300 to perhaps 400 million by 2025. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories. Overall, the Chinese government has tacitly supported migration as means of transforming China from a rural-based economy to an urban-based one.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7890_1386317.TIF
  • A steel worker at the Wuhan iron and steel plant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176523.JPG
  • Women working in a textile factory in Huaxi.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176510.JPG
  • Women working in a textile factory in Huaxi.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176503.JPG
  • Men working on a car.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7314_1023424.JPG
  • Workers smelt nickel in heavy polluting, antiquated factories.
    RANDY OLSON_06396_663869.JPG
  • Taxi ride in Norilsk Siberia on our way to the Putorana Plateau with the Russian Geographic Society. The smokestacks are from Norilsk Nickel that produces 8 percent of all the pollution in Russia. The trees south of this plant are barren and dead.
    ngs0_3466.tif
  • Workers pull electrical power lines above pedestrians.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176329.JPG
  • The need for electrical power is so great in Shanghai that migrant workers are hired to hook them up by strapping a high voltage wire around their waist and pulling it across an already stressed grid by walking on the actual wires that bring the electricity.  There is a (dirty) coal power plant coming online every four to five days in China that could power a city the size of San Diego. Energy is wasted on an epic scale. One hundred cities with populations over 1 million faced extreme water shortages last year. China’s survival has always been built on the notion of a vastly powerful, infallible center. Thus, China has poor foundations on which to build the subtle network of institutions and accountability necessary to manage the complexities of a modern economy and society. The lack of independent scrutiny and accountability lies behind the massive waste in the Chinese government and destruction of the environment. Air pollution contributed by these plants kills 400,000 people prematurely every year.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176327.TIF
  • Workers repair electrical power lines above pedestrians. The need for electrical power is so great in Shanghai that migrant workers are hired to hook them up by strapping a high voltage wire around their waist and pull it across an already stressed net by walking on the actual wires that bring the electricity.  There is a (dirty) coal power plant coming online every four to five days in China that could power a city the size of San Diego. Energy is wasted on an epic scale. One hundred cities with populations over 1 million faced extreme water shortages last year. China’s survival has always been built on the notion of a vastly powerful, infallible center. Thus, China has poor foundations on which to build the subtle network of institutions and accountability necessary to manage the complexities of a modern economy and society. The lack of independent scrutiny and accountability lies behind the massive waste in the Chinese government and destruction of the environment. Air pollution contributed by these plants kills 400,000 people prematurely every year.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176331.TIF
  • A young teenager stands on a submerged log to help miners sluice for gold in mine tailings at an improvised mine in Ghana.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1198337.TIF
  • Worker at Wuhan Iron and Steel, Wuhan China.
    China1989_088.tif
  • A Ugandan man uses a fire setting system for breaking rock.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7890_1386339.TIF
  • A Ugandan child watches a fire setting system for breaking rock.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7890_1386339-2.TIF
  • A man washes his windshield while waiting to unload a container ship.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6842_964875.jpg
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