Falkland Road: Prostitutes of Bombay

by Mary Ellen Mark

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 street to survey the girls. Mary Ellen Mark's extraordinary portrait of Falkland Road was first published in 1981 and has long been recognized as one of the major bodies of work in the canon of this significant Magnum photographer. The book contains 65 photographs made over six weeks that show the daily life lived by the women (and men) of the street. Mark's images are beautiful, electric, shocking and remarkable for their emotional power and for the visceral brilliance of their color. Together with Mark's captions and introductory text, Falkland Road is an astonishing work of insight into a raw and frightening world, made accessible by the completeness of the photographer's involvement, by her humanity, and by the way she captures the variety of individual life and the color, passion and tenderness that still abide there.

Genres: Photography, Art

123 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1981

About the author

Mary Ellen Mark, born 1940, has achieved worldwide visibility through her numerous books, exhibitions and editorial magazine work. She is a contributing photographer to The New Yorker and has published photo-essays and portraits in such publications as Life, New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. For over four decades, she has travelled extensively to make pictures that reflect a high degree of humanism. Today, she is recognized as one of our most respected and influential photographers. Her images of our world's diverse cultures have become landmarks in the field of documentary photography. Her portrayals of Mother Teresa, Indian circuses, and brothels in Bombay were the product of many years of work in India. A photo essay on runaway children in Seattle became the basis of the academy award nominated film STREETWISE, directed and photographed by her husband, Martin Bell.

Reviews

[Ahmad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perhaps one of the most morally questionable books I have ever read. Has a colonialist see-these-savages air to it. There is a fine line a reporter has to walk between conveying the suffering of others and reveling in it. This book is unapologetically of the latter type.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

An exploitation book: come and see the misery of poor people in India. The photos are dark, not because of some aestetic goal, but because the skills of the author are not good enough for the given task. Turning the pages I wonder about the terrible life of women raped daily in those tiny rooms. I wonder how would this book help. It did help the author to sell another book with naked breasts as "art". And nothing more. Disgusting.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

After watching the moving documentary Streetwise, I did a little research on Mark and came across this 1981 book of photography and vignettes of working prostitutes of Bombay. This is a collection of very candid, matter-of-fact pictures of female and transvestite prostitutes at work. After several pages of introduction covering how Mark came over more than one visit to befriend some of these people there are full page photos with captions.

[Atul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dystopian, disturbing yet painstakingly human.

[Qinwei Li]

really shocking descriptions and very blunt about the truth of living at falkland road. and i think i’ve read a version that is much darker than the original print.

[Serge Bouvet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was in Kolkata. I was wandering around College Street, in the Bowbazar area. I was looking for some old National Geographic magazine. On a chair, from an old bookstore, as if forgotten, a cover of a photobook caught my attention. A woman with her shirt off. A white paper modestly hid the naked saints. I flipped through the book and thought, "Wow, the photo report is amazing!" That's how I discovered Mary Ellen's book "Falkland Road: Prostitutes of Bombay" which I bought for 400 rupees. Falkland Road is a masterpiece because of its honest portrayal of the lives of prostitutes in the red-light district of Mumbai.

The book showed raw images of street prostitutes and brothels taken between October 1978 and January 1979 in Falkland Road in Mumbai. Mary Ellen Mark has succeeded in making a humanistic and very intimate book. Like photographer Henri Cartier Bresson who photographed the frolics of lesbian prostitutes in Mexico in 1934 (see photo "The spider of love"), Mary Ellen Mark also photographed prostitutes while they were having sex with their clients.

If Bresson took the pictures without warning, Mary Ellen Mark she had been able to negotiate the sex shots. During his time in Falkland Road, Mary Ellen Mark developed close relationships with many women, prostitutes and transvestites. There was eroticism in Bresson's pictures, not at Mary Ellen Mark's. The nude portraits Mark has captured evoke a sense of worry rather than sexual stimulation. The portraits of Munni, 15 ord Putla, 13, give a glimpse into the dark lives of these young girls.

This book shows the misery under the saturated colours of the red brothel lamps. Falkland Road remains for me one of the greatest photo essay books. It is prominently displayed on my shelf among the books of Ronny Sen, Raghu Rai and Raghubir Singh. I consult him often. There is so much humanity in this book...

[Julie Grace Immink · Rating 5 out of 5]

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