Tea time

Nikon Ambassador Marie Bärsch swaps fashion photography for a documentary project exploring female empowerment

-  Marie Bärsch

During a commercial shoot last year, I came across these women, who pick leaves in the tea fields of Munnar, India. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I was amazed by their work, conducted in such a physically intense environment. From a visual perspective, the pattern of the women among the rich, neatly harvested tea fields captured my attention.

My belief is that many of us live in a society where we’re always striving to achieve something new or have the latest thing – we can find ourselves in our own bubble, with limited capacity to look beyond this. I felt it was important to show a glimpse of another way of life; that there are women, for better or worse, who carry out this type of hard labour and appear to inherit the role of providers in their family naturally.