Inspired by contemporary Indian authors, Betsy Karel went to Bombay seeking visual equivalents for the humanity, humor, mystery and psychological energy of their stories. Unlike many photographers drawn to the cacophony of urban India, she focuses, often in an intensely personal way, on individuals going about their everyday street lives. She waits patiently in the bustle of Bombay, as individuals transform public spaces into private places, forging islands of intimacy. She captures a poignant lyricism in the familiar, and the true jadoo (magic) of the city. Karel, born in New York City, now lives in Washington, DC. She worked as an award-winning photojournalist in the 1970's and early 80's. Here she collaborates with acclaimed writers Ardashir Vakil and Suketu Mehta, who have written companion pieces.
Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. His autobiographical account of his experiences in Mumbai, Maximum City, was published in 2004. The book, based on two and a half years of research, explores the underbelly of the city. He has won a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. Mehta's work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper's, Time, Newsweek, The New York Review of Books and Scroll.in, and has been featured on NPR's Fresh Air, and NPR's All Things Considered. Mehta has also written original screenplays for films, including New York, I Love You (2008) and Mission Kashmir (2000) with novelist Vikram Chandra. His latest book This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto, was published in June 2019 under a 2007 Guggenheim fellowship. A forthright defense of immigrants, both legal and illegal, in the wake of colonialism, the book argued that "the West has forced people to become migrants. The right to migrate is overdue reparation for those centuries of degradation and exploitation."