Falkland Road: Prostitutes of Bombay

New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. Photographs and text by Mary Ellen Mark.
4to, 17, [18-112] pp., ill.

Inscribed by the author to Lucien and Yolande Clergue on the title page: “For Lucien & Yolande - / Thank you for - - your /  wonderful encouragement - / support - and for Arles, which / is a beautiful memory and / a great event in the / strange world of photography - / with great admiration / both for / your work / and for / your loving / support of / photographers - / {who are / very difficult / people -} / with all / my love - / Mary Ellen - / New York/ June 18, 1981”. First edition, paperback issue (published simultaneously with the hardcover). One of the earliest photobooks entirely devoted to prostitutes and their daily lives.

A landmark photobook by the American documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark (1940–2015), a member of Magnum Photos in 1977–1981. Mark first came to Falkland Road, Bombay’s notorious red-light street, on her first trip to India in 1968, but her attempts to photograph there met with hostility and aggression. About ten years later she persuaded Geo magazine to send her back on assignment; in the end the pictures appeared in Stern, as Geo found them too shocking. Between October 1978 and January 1979 she gradually entered the life of the street, befriending the prostitutes, transvestites and madams. The book’s 65 colour photographs record the daily life of the women (and men) of Falkland Road.

Provenance

Lucien Clergue (1934–2014), French photographer, who in 1970 co-founded the Rencontres d'Arles, the photography festival held every summer in his native town. In 2006 he became the first photographer elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, in its newly created photography section, and in 2013 served as its president. The inscription is also addressed to his wife, Yolande Clergue, curator and founder of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles.

Mark's affectionate words about Arles take on added meaning in light of later events: in 2024, more than forty years after this inscription, the Rencontres d'Arles, the festival Clergue had co-founded, presented Encounters, the first worldwide retrospective of her work. Among the works on view were photographs of the women of Falkland Road, the series published in this book.

Binding & condition

Original pictorial wrappers. Good: edges lightly rubbed, small losses to spine.

References

The Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present (Hasselblad Center, 2004), pp. 324–325; Fred Ritchin and Carole Naggar, Magnum Photobook: A Catalogue Raisonné (Phaidon, 2016), p. 79.