Cobalt Red
Every day, we reach for our phones, our laptops, our electric vehicles – marvels of modern engineering that connect us, inform us, and move us. We rarely pause to consider the raw materials that make them possible, or the hands that extract them. Siddharth Kara’s Cobalt Red forces us to look directly into the heart of that disconnect, tracing the journey of cobalt from the perilous, hand-dug mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo to the devices in our pockets. This isn't a story of distant geopolitics; it's about the children and adults who risk their lives daily, often for pennies, to fuel our digital lives. It’s about the uncomfortable truth that our technological convenience is built on a foundation of extreme human exploitation, and how easily we've learned to look away. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.