Mary Ellen Mark: Falkland Road: Prostitutes of Bombay

by Mary Ellen Mark

Book Overview

Falkland Road is a notorious street of prostitutes in Bombay. It is like any busy lower-class street in Bombay, densely populated by vendors, merchants and shops, but also overcrowded with girls, from 11-year-olds to 65-year-old ex-madams. The street is lined with old wooden buildings, which teem with prostitutes hanging out of the windows, in the viewing cages on the ground floor, and on the steps. From sunrise to sunset the customers pass down the...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3865211283
• ISBN13: 9783865211286
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Steidl
• Length: 106 Pages
• Weight: 3.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 12.8" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

Documentation of an Unimaginable World

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.