The air was thick with dust; like a layer of delicate black velvet, fine particles of coal settled over everything—roads, shops, homes and people. Nothing and no one was spared. Roughly 3 years later, I traveled to Dhanbad, the largest city in Jharkhand and also the administrative headquarters of a district of the same name, which holds some of the largest mines in all of India. Over five weeks, I worked out of a small hotel in the city’s old market.

Seven years later, in September 2010, I returned to Dhanbad. Little had changed. Living conditions in the villages had not improved. More land stood denuded, and underground fires had spread farther still, causing severe damage to more homes. In places, houses were marked by numbers indicating when their residents were scheduled to be relocated and to where—sometimes places over 20 kilometers away.

I returned to Dhanbad again in January of 2018 to further document changes as extraction of coal has shifted from underground mining to open-cast. A sense of urgency prevails among communities around these coal mines. On all my visits, a sense of menace attended me through much of my work.