India is one of the largest and most populated countries in the world, with over one billion inhabitants. Of this number, it’s estimated that around 2.3 million people are currently living with HIV. Never the less, in India, as elsewhere, AIDS is often seen as “someone else’s problem” – as something that affects people living on the margins of society, whose lifestyles are considered immoral. Even as it moves into the general population, the HIV epidemic is still misunderstood among the Indian public. People living with HIV have faced violent attacks, been rejected by families, spouses and communities, been refused medical treatment, and even, in some reported cases, denied the last rites before they die. In a country where poverty, illiteracy and poor health are rife, the spread of HIV presents a daunting challenge.

UNDP works with the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to respond to HIV and AIDS in India and reduce its impact by supporting the national efforts and offering knowledge, resources and technical expertise to effectively implement the National AIDS Control Program.
Almost 15.6 million people across India were provided with information, training and services to improve their capacities to deal with HIV. People living with HIV as well as trafficking survivors receive livelihood training to expand their employment opportunities and skills.
On an assignment for UNDP in Orissa I visited an HIV clinic in a town about twenty kilometers from Bhubaneshwar and met some of the people who need to live with HIV.

Usharani Behera (30) and her daughter Rani (3) at the community care center at Cuttack, about 20km from Bhubaneshwar, Orissa. They were tested HIV+ in 2007 once her husband was seriously ill. © Sephi Bergerson / UNDP India

Bipin Das (42) is an HIV+ truck driver. He now receives the HIV pension thanks to the advocacy of UNDP as part of the HIV mainstreaming project, and uses the money to travel for his ARV treatment. © Sephi Bergerson / UNDP India

Mandakini Behera (22) at the HIV community center at Cuttack, Orissa. She has tested HIV+ in 2004 and now receives the HIV government pension. © Sephi Bergerson / UNDP India

I am just about to complete shooting for my wedding book ‘Traditional Weddings in Modern India’. It is time of editing and selection. Heading down to Madurai in south India next week for another wedding that would be the last to go into the book. I must have close to 20,000 images to select form but some images will surely make it to the final selection. There are of course many others but here is a short selection of images that I like so far.

A traditional make-up for a Bengali bride. Maxima was definitely one of the most beautiful brides I've photographed. I simply loved how happy she was and how her face shined in this picture. A simple shot, and such a happy one. (Maxima and Abhijit's Bengali wedding in Delhi)

During a wedding in Chennai, I could see the bride was going to cry so I picked up my second camera with 35mm lens and waited for this shot to happen. A split second later she wiped the tear and was smiling again. (Nitya & Sharath's Tamil-Brahmin wedding in Chennai)

A quiet moment in the dressing room. A Rajput bride just before the wedding ceremony. Rajputs are instructed by the family members not to show any sign of happiness during their wedding and behave in a 'Royale' manner. There was not one smile during the entire wedding. (Kanupriya & Ravindra's Rajput wedding in Gwalior)

A bride waiting for her husband-to-be behind a veil during a wedding in Andra Pradesh. I had to pick up the veil and almost go in with her in order to get this intimate picture of solitude. (Sameera & Pradeep's wedding in Visakhapatnam)

A baraat procession during a Hindu punjabi wedding. I wanted to get the shot of the people carrying the lamps and had to work without a flash for that or I would have changed the image completely and loose the entire feel of the night lit by the lanterns. The light falling on the bridegroom and his horse came out just the way I had hoped. (Karishma & Rishabh's wedding in Delhi)

I loved the tired face of the couple waiting for the photogrtaphers to finish harassing them. A photo session like this takes place before the wedding and could sometime last close to two hours! The couple is seated on a podium and the entire family and guests come up to great them and have their picture taken. It was otherwise, a very happy wedding indeed. (Karishma & Rishabh's wedding in Delhi)

The ultimate close-up of an Indian bride's hands during the wedding ceremony. (Karishma & Rishabh's wedding in Delhi)

During a Kashmiri Pundit wedding I saw the priest holding a plastic miror in his hand. I had a feeling it was going to be used for the bride and groom to look at each other so quickly positioned myself just behind them and was ready as the priest held his hand out just for a second in front of the couple. It is one of those shots that one can never get unless you wait for them to happen. (Anuradha & Nikhil's Kashmiri Pundit wedding in Delhi)

A muslim bride signs the Nikha in front of the mulah. The bridesgroom signs the Nikah separately and then the couple are pronounced married. The entire ceremony took one minute and the wedding was over. (Aashti & Zahid's Muslim wedding in Delhi)

No wedding in India is complete without Hijras. One cannot anticipate when or where they will show up so cannot plan to photograph them, but I needed pictures of this 'ceremony' for my book. I finally got 'lucky' outside the gate of a large farm house where a Sikh wedding reception was taking place. Shot with available light under the street light. I absolutely love the colors and the feel of this image.

For more images of Indian weddings, please visit  FotoWala | Wedding Photography in India | Sephi Bergerson

If you have ever been to India you must know what ‘Horn Please’ means as it is carefully written on the back of all the trucks in the subcontinent as an advice for the driver who intends to go past them. We thought this would make the perfect name for a book about Indian trucks.

‘Horn Please – Trucking in India’ is a new upcoming book on trucking and the life and realities of truck drivers in India that will come out in December 2009. I was originally supposed to be the book’s photo editor but when I had a day off between two assignments in Kolkata a few months ago, I went to the fruit market to see what it is like, and shot a few images there. It was so much fun and so colorful that I then decided the book will have to be shot from scratch and not bought from stock, as was the original intention.

The majority of the images in the book will be mine while the rest by some other great photographers like Zackary Canepary, Thomas Pickard and Claude Barutel that have done some incredible work. The book is fully sponsored by a leading trucking and transportation company in India with a network form Kashmir to Kanyakumary.

Here are a few of my images from the upcoming book.

A truck driver having his first morning chai on a foggy winter day in Punjab

Drivers go about their morning duties in a Kolkata market

Kashmiri truck drivers in the cabin of their truck. Drivers spend weeks at a time on the road and deck the truck as fully as they can to make the time away from home as comfortable as possible

A decorated cabin of a truck in Kerala

A long line of trucks wait their turn for checking at the notorious Walayar check post between Tamil Nadu and Kerala in south India

A driver about to start making dinner in the cabin of his truck. Punjab

A makeshift restaurant at a truck depot outside of Delhi

An open-chassis truck seen through the front window of a taxi on the Agra-Delhi road. Half built trucks are a common view on Indian roads. The chassis is manufactured by the truck manufacturer but the rest of the truck is made of wood and will be built and decorated individually

A truck comes down a hill road undergoing maintenance near Wayanad, Kerala

Trucks at the fruit market in Kolkata, west Bengal

A decorated truck loaded with timber near Munar, Kerala

Toy trucks for sale in a roadside stall near Bathinda, Punjab

]]> http://www.sephi.com/documentary-photography/trucking-in-india/feed/ 10 http://www.sephi.com/documentary-photography/displaced-in-orissa/ http://www.sephi.com/documentary-photography/displaced-in-orissa/#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:34:23 +0000 sephi http://www.sephi.com/?p=1819

‘Dispaced‘ is a project commissioned by the United Nations Developement Program (UNDP India) as part of the R&R (Resettlement & Rehabilitation) project in the state of Orissa in eastern India. With the growing Indian economy grows the demand for land for new commercial and industrial projects and with that comes the need to relocate entire villages and communities. This is a series of portraits of villagers in Orissa who have been evicted, or are about to be evicted form their homes and villages as their land is given to newly constructed industrial projects.

With the new economy and the influence of globalization, a new generation is emerging in India. People who are more fashion conscious and are more aware of materialistic indulgence. They wear branded cloths, have mobile phones, go to clubs and have a completely new attitude that comes across in the way they walk, talk and behave. it is India’s Mall generation.

Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi, lies on prime property right in the middle of India’s financial capital, Mumbai (Bombay). It is home to more than a million people. Many are second-generation residents, whose parents moved in years ago. A city within a city, it is one unending stretch of narrow dirty lanes, open sewers and cramped huts. In a city where house rents are among the highest in the world, Dharavi provides a cheap and affordable option to those who move to Mumbai to earn their living. As Dharavi is located between Mumbai’s two main suburban rail lines, most people find it convenient for work. Dharavi also has a large number of thriving small-scale industries that produce embroidered garments, export quality leather goods, pottery and plastic. Most of these products are made in tiny manufacturing units spread across the slum and are sold in domestic as well as international markets. The annual turnover of business here is estimated to be more than $650m (£350m) a year.

The state government has plans to redevelop Dharavi and transform it into a modern township, complete with proper housing and shopping complexes, hospitals and schools.

APD – ‘the Association for People with Disabilities’ runs a school for children with physical disabilities in Bangalore. The school caters to children with disabilities from varied socio-economic backgrounds. Children not only get to sharpen their academic skills, but also learn to manage their lives and work towards a brighter future.

In remote villages and urban slums, an army of experts and committed volunteers is fighting what could be the final battle in an age-old war. The polio eradication campaign is the largest non-military, global enterprise ever. It involves dozens of organizations, scores of governments, thousands of health workers and millions of volunteers. In a world of AIDS, malaria and other health crises, the eradication of polio would demonstrate that humankind can triumph over nature.
Since campaigns began in 1996, India has made remarkable progress, reducing polio cases from up to an estimated 100,000 a year to fewer than 70 in 2004, to date (September ’04). The Polio Eradication Partnership (GOI, The World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, Rotary International, along with the US Centers for Disease Control) has set a target to eradicate polio from India by the first half of 2005. However, health workers face major obstacles in defeating the virus once-and-for-all. In a country with a population of over one billion, most of which live in remote villages or heavily congested areas, it is virtually impossible to keep an accurate database of newborn children. Some communities resist polio immunization, but ultimately it is a lack of funds and patchy commitment that could endanger the success of the mission. The cost of failure would be staggering. If the campaign loses steam and immunization rates drop, polio could quickly re-emerge and threaten a whole new generation of children, even in places that have long been polio-free.