The humble people, the poor, the exploited ones, are the bearers of great dignity . They embody the full meaning of this word, because they live in a world where dignity is not easily achieved.
Elegance and Dignity by Marco Palladino is made of 10 photo stories across India and goes through the recent industrial development, tells about the labour and poor classes, and then describes the preindustrial and archaic agricultural villages of India. This book is the result of a unique project realized in one expedition in order to describe and tell one of the most interesting and important country in the world. The book focuses on the strict relationships between new industrial development and traditional ways of life in India.
The journey started in Mumbai describing the conditions of the modern urban neo-proletariat having typically Indian connotations, it then moved on to the naval cemeteries in Gujarat. Since then the iconographic research covered the preindustrial villages of India living in close connection with modernity but no participation: about the fishermen’s villages threatened by pollution and industrial fishing, then in the region where ethnic minorities live, the so-called tribal villages; about the Indian women doing strenuous works in the pre-industral villages. Photographs on Udaipur in Rajasthan and on Hampi in Karnataka close the book and offer an overview upon the historical heritage.
The book is in both Italian and English (see preview).
Book preview from Google Books:
