Mary Ellen Mark: Falkland Road: Prostitutes of Bombay

This book contains a collection of photos of ordinary life on Falkland Rd, the redlight district of Bombay in the late 1970s. Mark introduces the book with a brief text describing some of the difficulties that she had to overcome in order to take the pictures. Like any tightly-woven neighborhood residents were reluctant to let an outsider take their pictures while they were engaging in aspects of their daily life. Before Mark could begin to get some candid shots, she needed to approach the residents and earn their trust. Because she took the time to get to know her subjects, she is able to portray them not as sex objects, but as people with emotions, desires, hopes, and needs. Mark portrays many aspects of the prostitutes' world. She includes photos of the transvestite prostitutes as well as the female prostitutes, their children, their husbands and other family members. In her photos, we see the range of prostitutes from the lowest price girls in the cages at street level to the ones working in "luxury" accommodations far above the street. Mark relates some of the heart-rendering stories of the prostitutes, how they were kidnapped or sold into prostitution by desperate parents; others were born into the business. This is a remarkable book not only for its photographs capturing the soul of the human condition, but also for its documentation of the sex industry in one corner of the developing world.