Lal Mati is a preservation of that which is almost lost. In my home of Shantiniketan, West Bengal, India, the region’s iconic red dirt roads are disappearing at a startling rate. This lal mati (red soil) is flattened, widened and paved into roadways more suitable for rapid commercial development of the tourism industry. Ironically, what has drawn scores of tourists and real estate developers into the region is the virginal romanticism first emphasized by Rabindranath Tagore in his many writings; a place now marred by cement boundary walls, resort construction, and planned vacation home communities.

Out of an impulse of preservation, I collected a soil sample from the road behind my house when I noticed that it, too, would be smudged from the landscape. Months later, I discovered the process of soil chromatography and created a series of photographic fingerprints. These images are literally a translation of the soil and its mineral composition. Soon, they will be all that is left of Shantiniketan’s red dirt roads.