Invisible hands

Tea bags, for me, symbolize consumerism and a fast-paced way of life; a product that is prepared, consumed, and discarded in the shortest possible time. Within this accelerated process, attention is typically directed toward the product itself rather than the journey it has undergone before reaching our hands. In this series, documentary photographs of tea farmers in the tea fields of Gilan have been printed onto this everyday product using the cyanotype process, as an attempt to bring part of this hidden production chain back into view. What matters to me is creating a brief pause at the moment of consumption; a pause in which we may remember the people, the time, and the labor embedded within a product whose presence in everyday life has become so commonplace that its origins are gradually fading from our collective memory.