Photographer Dan Nelken discusses his portrait of Janet, a Ugandan quarry worker, drawn from his project HeadStrong, which documents women labourers in and around Gulu, northern Uganda. The image forms part of a wider body of work highlighting how women shoulder much of the region's physical labour, often while raising children alone, and it matters as a rare, dignified visual record of lives usually overlooked by mainstream photography.

Nelken first visited Gulu in 2017 while his wife taught at an NGO, initially photographing market vendors before refining his approach a year later using mosquito netting as a symbolic backdrop referencing malaria. He photographed 116 women at a quarry roughly 10 miles from town, including Janet, who supported eight children after her husband lost a leg in a boda-boda accident, and a 10-year-old girl, Jovia, working weekends to fund her education. Author Beatrice Lamwaka interviewed each subject, capturing stories shaped by poverty and the lingering trauma of northern Uganda's civil war.