Delhi offers a stunning series of more than 150 full-colour documentary photographs and companion first-person texts, which together offer an unprecedented portrait of LGBTQ people’s lives in India today. Focusing on Delhi, noted photographers Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh chronicle the halting emergence of networks of men and women living under the shadow of stigma and criminalized behavior—in a country where anti-sodomy laws dating back to the British Empire were recently struck down, only to be reaffirmed in a surging wave of homophobia.
The photographs in this lavishly presented volume reflect the photographers’ celebrated capacity for entering into lives rarely seen. In Delhi, we are invited into the daily routines, work, homes, and intimate lives of subjects from different backgrounds—from urban professionals to day laborers. A visually arresting document in its own right, Delhi presents readers with a starting point for understanding the profound struggles for recognition by India’s LGBTQ community.
