I have been photographing in Calcutta to retrace the poetic memory of the almost-evaporated history that was once the Indo-American Ice Trade, the subsequent domestic production of ice in Calcutta, and the modern-day indoor snow-themed parks of India in the context of climate change.

In 1833, ice was harvested from Walden Pond and a few other ponds in New England, placed on a ship called the Tuscany, and sent to Calcutta by ice entrepreneur Frederic Tudor. Upon departure, there were 400,000 pounds of ice on the ship; when it arrived in Calcutta there were 83. No one in Calcutta had ever seen anything like it. Calcuttans wrote poems about ice to the local newspaper: poems about relief to the feeling of their brains on fire and of cold wine and ice cream. Some, upon touching the ice, felt like their hands were burning and ran.