name: trenton / age: 30 / profession: publisher / location: london / weekday: wednesday / reference: on the 11th may 2011 news reached jeddah that a man, later to named athiraman kannan, had the previous day, jumped to his death from the 147th floor of the world’s tallest building; the burji khalifa. from india, he came to dubai to work. he cleaned the newly opened building. in an attempt to honour athiraman kannan, and his courageous call for attention to the lives of migrant workers, that afternoon i photographed what i had in previous weeks started to describe as a ‘pop out city’. these spaces were described to me by the domestic workers as an attempt at permanency, comfort and retreat in an always vulnerable and precarious life as a migrant worker. unlike the families they worked for, whose life exists almost entirely behind these walls, their lives exist on the street, which is forging new notions ‘the public’ in city largely concerned with ‘privacy’. (image taken the 11th may 2011 in al naeem, jeddah.)

name: trenton / age: 30 / profession: publisher / location: london / weekday: wednesday / reference: on the 11th may 2011 news reached jeddah that a man, later to named athiraman kannan, had the previous day, jumped to his death from the 147th floor of the world’s tallest building; the burji khalifa. from india, he came to dubai to work. he cleaned the newly opened building. in an attempt to honour athiraman kannan, and his courageous call for attention to the lives of migrant workers, that afternoon i photographed what i had in previous weeks started to describe as a ‘pop out city’. these spaces were described to me by the domestic workers as an attempt at permanency, comfort and retreat in an always vulnerable and precarious life as a migrant worker. unlike the families they worked for, whose life exists almost entirely behind these walls, their lives exist on the street, which is forging new notions ‘the public’ in city largely concerned with ‘privacy’. (image taken the 11th may 2011 in al naeem, jeddah.)

name: trenton / age: 30 / profession: publisher / location: london / weekday: wednesday / reference: on the 11th may 2011 news reached jeddah that a man, later to named athiraman kannan, had the previous day, jumped to his death from the 147th floor of the world’s tallest building; the burji khalifa. from india, he came to dubai to work. he cleaned the newly opened building. in an attempt to honour athiraman kannan, and his courageous call for attention to the lives of migrant workers, that afternoon i photographed what i had in previous weeks started to describe as a ‘pop out city’. these spaces were described to me by the domestic workers as an attempt at permanency, comfort and retreat in an always vulnerable and precarious life as a migrant worker. unlike the families they worked for, whose life exists almost entirely behind these walls, their lives exist on the street, which is forging new notions ‘the public’ in city largely concerned with ‘privacy’. (image taken the 11th may 2011 in al naeem, jeddah.)