We pick a headlamp from a stack laid out on a table in a corner of the Lalit Kala Akademi gallery, before pushing aside a curtain and stepping into a room that is dark. The beams of our lamps sweep across the walls and photographs slowly emerge. There are tall palmyrah trees, and nearly camouflaged by the foliage, workers balance precariously as they harvest palm sap, high above the ground. Sakthi Muneeswari, a Class XII student from Keezhaallikullam village in Ramanathapuram who has shot these photographs, points to her uncle and aunt in these frames documenting workers at the palm groves in her village. “They work well into the night, and wear these headlamps. They are so high up from the ground and hidden from view; often we realise there is a worker in a tree only if we hear a sound,” she says. Photographs by Sakthi, and six other student photographers in and around Sayalkudi in Ramanathapuram district are now on display at the Lalit Kala Akademi gallery, as part of an exhibition, Lives Among The Palms. This documentation of the lives, labour, landscapes and the everyday of the workers from the palmyrah belt and coastal communities there, is the result of an initiative by photographer Palani Kumar, founder of the People’s Photographer’s Collective (PPC), in collaboration with the Rural Workers Development Society (RWDS) with the support of The People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI).