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Mumbai Diary by Fabien Seguin

I spent two months in Mumbai in June and July 2006. During this stay, I kept a visual diary. I wanted it to reflect my experience of this country and represent what surrounded me every day.
I lived for a month in the suburbs of Bandra, at the 4th floor of a condominium building where I was awakened every morning by crows shrieks and rickshaws engine noise. In July I moved to the city center, in Cuffe Parade, the southern tip of Mumbai, in a retired Parsi lawyer’s apartment who didn’t believe any more in democracy and who loved talking about Napoleon.
During these two months, I roamed the different districts of the capital of Maharashtra, Churchgate, Malabar Hill, Cuffe Parade, Colaba, Mahalaxmi, Cumbala, Dadar, and the northern suburbs, Bandra, Andheri, Borivli, Thane, Santa Cruz, Khar, Mulund, Goregaon. I lingered without reason on the beach of Chowpatty. I made an excursion to the nearby city of Pune. I watched the deluge of the monsoon from my window. I took a boat to Elephanta Island. I opened wide my eyes on the youth and vitality of this city, on its social contrasts too. I commuted on the suburban lines at rush hours, when there isn’t a square inch of space in the car and it turns into a collective sweat bath. I took taxis whose floor had big holes. I wandered on Marine Drive on Sunday, amid joggers and enlaced couples looking at the sea.

When I had to fly back, Mumbai had seduced me and I didn’t want to leave. I knew one day I would come back to experience it again.

About Fabien :

Fabien Seguin, b. 1980 in France, is a China-based documentary and fine art photographer. His personal work currently focuses on our relationship with nature, trees, nakedness and China. He works in medium format, mostly in color. His work has been exhibited in France for several festivals, as well as in China and USA. He will soon collaborate with a French photographic agency.

www : http://fabienseguin.com
blog : http://fabienseguin.com/blog/
cell : +86 1300.719.5003
present location : Wuhan, China

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New Indian Street Photography by Adrian Fisk

Adrian brings us his signature kaliedoscopic vision from the streets of India.

Adrian is a photographer and filmmaker working in asia. He is also a member of In-public. An online space representing some wonderful street photograhy and is celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. Big smile:)

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In-Public was set up in 2000 to provide a home for Street Photographers

Our aim is to promote Street Photography and to continue to explore its possibilities. All the photographers featured here have been invited to show their work because they have a unique ability to see the unusual in the everyday and to capture the moment. The pictures remind us that, if we let it, over-familiarity can make us blind to what’s really going on in the world around us.

2010 is the year that In-Public celebrates its 10th anniversary. We will be publishing a book of our street photography as well as having international exhibitions in recognition of the last ten years we have been working – http://www.in-public.com

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Alone Together by Sheetal Mallar

I find life in bombay a mad circus,like in most big cities i am sure..Loneliness is an emotion i carry inside, I think as most of us who live here do..I am fascinated with what lies beneath the face we put on when we get out.

I found that this experience made me feel not so alone anymore..

Most of these people are friends of mine. Some of them are people who i have seen around often,who i had not really spoken to. But had sort of become my unspoken friends. Who i felt strangely connected with.Most of these are shot in the urban suburbs of bombay. Some of these people are from out of town,trying to make a living here. Many live in cramped spaces alone or with their parents.Most of these are shot in their homes or their personal spaces.I  felt, it was the only way the mask comes off for that little while..

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About Sheetal

I started modeling at the age of seventeen. I was lost like most teenagers are that age and this sought of just happen. It was fun so, i decided to go with the flow. It has been an exciting and a fantastic journey. Before i knew it, eighteen years had passed.Though fashion and glamour was what my world seemed like, I felt like a voyeur.. The camera was always in my life. Though, i felt like i belonged on the other side.. It was a matter of time..

Happyland comes from the word hapilan, a local term for a dump site – and it’s an ironic name for one. Most of the scavengers in Happyland come from Sitio Damayan in Barangay 105 in Tondo, Manila, Philippines. Aside from scavenging, people here also work as charcoal makers. The kilns are inside the residential complex and smoke from producing charcoal envelops the whole community.

Happyland is . The stench from Happyland is overwhelming that I cannot fathom how these folks spend their lives everyday there. The smoke from charcoal kilns is so thick it can suffocate instantly. I had to be constantly reminded by the Philippine flags all over the place that Sitio Damayan is still a part of our country.

What struck me most is the fact that these people, though living in sub-human conditions, are a happy lot. They are wearing the same smile you see with people at a designer coffee shop. Scavengers earn a measly seventy-five pesos for a day’s work while the charcoal makers are better off with two hundred pesos.

I complain, almost too often, about anything and everything and these folks taught me to appreciate life. It’s unfortunate that I did not give anything back. But for what it’s worth, I’d rather remember the smiles and the kindness of these people than anything else. With these photos and words alone, I cannot make these people’s lives any better. One man can only do so much to change the world, but I can start sowing the seed and hopefully, something bigger will come from it.

I was a little saddened by the experience. I can go home and escape from the place but the folks there open their eyes every morning to the same living conditions. What I felt most was anger over the fact that these places exist and we allow these to happen. Humans are intelligent creatures. This should not happen.

Located in Himachal Pradesh, Manali was being stalked by a series of problems that locals had tried their best to conceal. Exploiting the wild marijuana which grows literally everywhere, due to the perfect climate in Manali for its cultivation and the demand by the the foreigners / illegal market, the locals has long been producing cup-winning hash and reap millions of incomes in return. Not only the illegal activities helps them to fund their infrastructure,

and economy development, but little they realize that it has slowly become a deadly desease, contaminating

their vein, and killing the society, turning this peaceful valley into darkness.

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Rahman Roslan is a 24-year-old photojournalist / documentary photographer based in Kuala Lumpur, focusing on news and documentary photography . He has recently travel to Kashmir to document the aftermath of the on going conflict, and won the Emerging Talent Award for FOUNDRY 2009 workshop, in Manali India.

In Tokyo, designated roads are shut down on Sundays in a way to compensate for the lack of city squares. These roads then become a pedestrian paradise. Over the years, this has resulted in the creation of a youth street culture composed of musicians and dancers. The movement peaked in the 1980s and Harajuku would see numerous groups collectively known as the Takenokozoku or the ‘Bamboo Shoot Children’ dance to music from their portable stereos. As more and more groups poured in, and more visitors arrived to see this humongous gathering, the scene got chaotic and locals complained about the noise and disorder. Finally, in 1992, the government stopped the ‘pedestrian paradise’ and Harajuku was never the same again.

However, one group that has still kept the spirit alive is a 50’s rock n’ roll dance group which is now called the Tokyo Rockabilly Club. Though ipods have replaced the tapes, their music and style has not changed one bit.
With typical Japanese punctuality, they meet every Sunday in tight leather outfits and slicked back hair outside Yoyogi Park in Harajuku to twist and shimmy till nightfall.
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Varun is studying photography in Tokyo and worked on this in series in early 2009.
For more visit www.flickr.com/photos/demondutt

The 2001 cencus of the country estimated their number at 22 Million. However, according to many observers the actual number of Indians with temporary and permanent disability could be as high as 60 Million. Despite a sound legal framework, a plethora of programmes, schemes and rules, improvements in the circumstances of persons with disabilities are far from visible.

Their lives continue to be handicapped by social, cultural and attitudinal barriers.

Arushi

Arushi means the first ray of the sun. The first ray of the sun brings forth a new day, fresh hope, promises and prospects. Arushi aspires to bring a ray of hope into the lives of the disadvantaged sections of the society by striving for their integration into the mainstream. Arushi is an Ngo, a centre of motivation and a platform of exposure for disabled people, encouraging them to explore the unexplored and unexpected.

Zishaan Akbar Latif.

It is the young Chinese who will inherit this new found global influence, but who are they and what do they think about life.

I have just returned from a 12500 km journey through China to find an answer to this question. I looked for young Chinese aged from 16 – 30 years, gave them a piece of paper and simply told them they could write what ever they wanted to on the piece of paper, I then photographed them holding the paper.

The results are fascinating

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Adrian Fisk is part of the www.in-public.com international collective of street photographers.

He is fascinated with all things foreign. Originally from south-west England, he has lives in Delhi, and his work focuses on cultures far removed from his rural roots. He concentrates on capturing scenes of daily life in some of the most crowded cities in the world.

He is currently working on an iSpeak for India.

”For his creative and daring symbolism within which he mercilessly depicts his perception of his family and background. The symbolism of his imagery is permeated by an un-staged nerve that communicates both the weight and pain within the depiction of the environment he knows and originates from.”

Has been working with this project the last 3 years.

Website: http://www.johanemanuelsson.com with CV & bio etc

More than cigarettes, more than the illicit whisky found in many middle-class households, more than the mouthwatering kebabs and roasted Red Sea fish that are the favored fare in the bazaars, what holds this devout Muslim nation of 16 million people in thrall is the mildly narcotic effect that comes from chewing the tender green leaves known as khat (pronounced GAHT).

Surveys show that more Yemenis than ever — at least 80 percent of men, about 60 percent of women and increasing numbers of children under 10 — settle down on most afternoons to a habit that ancient scripts recorded among merchants and religious mystics as early as the 10th century A.D. Plucking the choicest leaves off a bundle of khat branches, aficionados chew relentlessly into the evening, until the keenest of them have tennis-ball-sized gobs of leaves in their cheeks, and the appearance of glassy-eyed Popeyes.

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Wiatoslaw Wojtkowiak – see he his amazing collection of pictures here

Guide and photographer ( born 1979 ) , based in Poznan, Poland.

Member of www.thewideangle.com photo agency.

Experience :

CNN Traveller , National Geographic, National Geographic Traveller,
Newsweek, Globtroter, Poznaj Świat, Fotokurier, Dziennik Polski, Voyage,
Max Magazine, Survival International, ADRA , FAO , Lonely Planet, Faces Magazine,
MK Tramping , Tyskie , Masomo Project , Global Trade Watch.