Mumbai: In remembering victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster in a photo project, British documentary photographer Francesca Moore has also captured the courage and resilience of families who continue to be affected by one of the world’s worst industrial calamities.

“Bhopal: Facing 30” premieres in India at the Jehangir Art Gallery in the city on Thursday. The launch of this two-part project will put on view the site of the 1984 Bhopal disaster today and the people who continue to be affected thirty years on.

It coincides with the 31st anniversary of this tragic event — on December2 and 3 — showcasing Moore’s series of family portraits of the people who live around the boundary wall of the Union Carbide site, where the disaster took place.

Speaking of the unique photos taken in the style of traditional Indian studio portraiture against a background of rich drapes and carpet, one of the disaster’s survivors, Iqbal Khan, visiting Mumbai said, “I have never known of workers and poor class people being photographed like royals as Francesca did. We treat the colour picture she gave us as a family treasure.”

The exhibition will also feature an installation of the Union Carbide wall, built to contain the disaster site, juxtaposed with the formal portraits of the families who reside around it. The families in the portraits continue to get treatment from the Sambhavna Trust Clinic for resulting health issues, including third generation birth defects.

Moore is a documentary photographer whose personal work stems from interests in people and the environment. With a methodological and formalised approach, she draws on her scientific background to portray humanitarian, social and environmental issues. The “Bhopal: Facing 30” portraits were also exhibited in the UK and Europe and shortlisted and exhibited in the UK for Environmental Photographer of Year 2014.

In Moore’s words, “The people of Bhopal are not victims as a result of their own actions, or simply through poverty; they were subjected to a system that facilitated the economic growth of a multinational company, at the expense of life and the environment.”

In a release on Wednesday by the Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti, representing the struggle of the victims, on the 31st anniversary, it said, “The escape of about 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate — a highly toxic chemical — from a storage tank on the premises of the pesticide plant of Union Carbide India Ltd in Bhopal, the capital of state of Madhya Pradesh — on the night of December 2 and 3 1984 resulted in a horrendous disaster.”

Due to negligence, on the part of the plant management, in taking precautions, poisonous and lethal gases heavier than air spread across a 40 square-kilometre area in Bhopal, leaving in its wake more 20,000 dead over several years and inflicting injuries in varying degree on about 550,000 others.

The gases even had a pernicious impact on plants and animals in the affected area, the release said.

On the unjust compensation and injustice, it further said, “Even three decades after the disaster, neither the State nor the Central Government has attempted either to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the ramification of the disaster or to take necessary remedial measures.”