© David Goldman. Migrant worker, Bangladesh, 2012.

During the months of November and December 2012, photographer David Goldman traveled to India and Bangladesh to photograph on assignment for the United Nations Trust Fund To End Violence Against Women annual report. These images, taken from the series, convey the lives of  those he met while visiting four beneficiaries of the fund: the Lawyer’s Collective in Delhi, which works to protect women’s rights; the Karnataka Health Promotion Trust in Bangalore that works to help women report abuse and educates about HIV and who took him to photograph some of the women with whom they work, sex workers known as Devadasi; the Adavasi (an aboriginal Indian population) in Ranchi who have struggled with issues of acceptance and equality; and the migrant workers of Dhaka, Bangladesh who have been leaving the country in droves because of poor working conditions.

–Lindsay Comstock

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“The back of an elephant is the best way to get close to tigers, rhinoceros, and other animals.” © Joan Myers

The images in Joan Myers’s new book, The Jungle at the Door, were inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s jungle stories, which the photographer read as a child. However, the magnificent animals featured in the book are threatened with extinction, hunted by poachers eager for their skins, teeth and claws. And their habitat is shrinking in the face of increasing development. Myers says, “Seeing a tiger in the wild is a rare and special gift.  I fear that, with their numbers steadily decreasing, it is unlikely that my grandchildren will have the opportunity I had to see a tiger in Kipling’s forest. And as we lose these wild animals and wild places, we lose a primitive and mysterious wildness that has long been part of our human psyche.”

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Environmental portraits © Reed Young/ Still Life images © Mike Depasquale

In recent years the media has depicted India as a booming economic powerhouse. In 2011, its GDP grew at seven percent–more than four times the rate of the U.S.  economy. India’s growth is symbolic of opportunities, modernization and development, with a fast-growing middle class. Yet the country’s economic success is rarely depicted beyond the business section. India is often labeled a land of contradiction—the poverty of many contrasted with the wealth of few—and traditional media outlets dramatically highlight its underdevelopment. But what about the stories of the successful and affluent, the individuals riding the economic upswing?

This discrepancy gave rise to The Seven Percent, a series of portraits, still lifes, and interviews focusing on the affluent, including those who have inherited fortunes–and those who have built their own success. The portraits show each subject in his or her comfort zone: home, office or car. Because lifestyles are symbolized by the ritual and etiquette of eating, each portrait is accompanied by a still life of the subject’s finished dinner plate.

The subjects are businessmen, professionals, and ex-nobility, all with different lifestyle, values, and political beliefs. But they all look ahead, with great optimism, to the opportunities India’s continued progress will afford them. Text and captions by Annalisa Merelli.

Above:  Gaj Singh is the son of the last nobleman of Alsisar, Rajasthan. Born in Jaipur, he was in the army before launching his hotel business. He now owns three hotels in Rajasthan, two of which are his family residences converted into heritage accommodations. He is married, has two sons, and lives in Alsisar Haveli, his hotel in Jaipur. “We had so many people working around us […] but gradually it faded and by the time I was passing out of school in 1976, we didn’t have many people working for us, but again, with this present business […] the bygone era has come back.”

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Alka Theater II, Jaipur, India 2010

In the Spring of 2010 and 2011, photographer Katherine Newbegin traveled alone to India where she began a series on cinemas. Most were still currently in use at the time Newbegin photographed them. But in the larger, more developed cities, she says these aging cinemas were harder to find because they are disappearing rapidly in favor of the new mega-plexes, which do not have to pay taxes for 3 years.

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All photos © Abby Robinson.

Abby Robinson’s ongoing series, In Camera, is a look into the old photo studios throughout Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and Vietnam “where the past, the present, the traditional and the contemporary collide and where painted backgrounds and props give clues into notions of class, taste and aspiration.” So many of these painted backdrops and props are being replaced by digital post-production techniques, but the details of Robinson’s colorful panoramas remind us of the culturally rich creative process of in-camera studio photography.

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