It's a Man's World

In the autumn of 2024 I walked the lanes of Kumartuli, in north Kolkata, where the city's Durga idols are made. That August, a young doctor had been raped and murdered in a Kolkata hospital, and the city was in protest. Posters were pinned to the workshop doors: Kumartuli raises its voice. May my Durga have justice.

Inside, the goddess was everywhere. Half-made in clay and straw, wrapped in plastic, arms raised, waiting for her face. The hands I saw at work, and the names painted above the doors, were all men's.

These photographs sit inside that contradiction: a city that worships the feminine as power, in a season when it could not keep a woman safe. They are in black and white because the festival is not the subject. The subject is who shapes the image of a woman, and who is absent from its making.