Destiny's Children

A new book, Illuminate, showcases intimate portraits of life and love in Kolkata’s red-light district, captured by the area’s at-risk youth

- Esha Mahajan

What chance do you have when home is a brothel? When that’s the distinction that precedes, or rather determines, who you are. When your address isn’t just geography but a marker of your identity: Resident of Kalighat, one of Kolkata’s oldest and most thriving red-light districts. You take control of your story and the way you tell it. You pick up a camera and focus on a heartwarming truth of a heartbreaking experience. You prove that they can both co-exist.

That’s what happened last October, when NYC-based nonprofit Beauty for Freedom arrived in Kolkata to work with over 100 survivors of human trafficking, children of sex workers, and at-risk youth at New Light, a public charitable trust in Kalighat. Among its many workshops—health, fitness, beauty, art, fashion—was a five-day photography course for 40 students. Armed with DSLR cameras, they trawled through their neighbourhood and captured intimate portraits of life as it happened. Amidst the reality of violence and prostitution, what they saw wasn’t despair but hope. Laughter. Friendship. Innocence. The results, a selection from over 5,000 images, comprise an upcoming book Illuminate.