Mr Malhotra's Party
(2007-2012)
In the 1980s I worked on constructed documentary images of anonymous gay men in historic architectural spaces in Delhi “Exiles”. That was a time when the terms ‘gay’ or ‘homosexuality’ were not acceptable to polite society and the media. Back then it was a challenge for me to make a photographic series about humans that did not have a right to exist. It seemed so fraught that I never returned to this theme till I came to live once again in Delhi.
In the early 2000s India, homosexual women and men inhabited spaces like “private” parties. Gay nights at local clubs in Delhi were always sign- posted as private parties in a fictitious person's name. In the intervening years there have been occasions when both men and women, straight and gay have stood up and demonstrated for LGBT rights in public places. Reported by the media of the time the silence was finally broken and increasingly more people are willing to risk being “out” about their sexuality.
With these photographs in this series, I am trying to visualise this latest virtual queer space through a series of portraits of “real” people who identify their sexuality as 'queer' in some way. This time, as opposed to when ‘Exiles’ was being made, people look straight into the camera and we see around them local aspects of where they live or work, inhabiting a more vernacular architectural space. This time they are willing to name themselves. There was a rising desire for decriminalisation in the air by 2005, and this was confirmed by the first legalisation in the Delhi High Court in 2009. Already by 2008 Pride marches had started taking place so it seemed like a perfect time to look at LGBT people in the eye. Here they are guests of an imaginary party, which I have called “Mr Malhotra's Party”, after the ubiquitous Punjabi refugee who arrived post-partition and contributed to the development of Delhi as a bustling commercial capital city.
The photographs were made over several years between 2007 and 2012. They cover a period shortly after I arrived back in Delhi to live after an absence of thirty five years. They also cover a period of intense lobbying to change the colonial anti-sodomy law in India. The 2009 Delhi High Court ruling that sex between consenting would no longer be criminalised was challenged in the Supreme Court and the judgement was reversed. In between, queer people of all genders enjoyed a liberty that was unimaginable and never before seen in modern India.
In “Exiles” I had used the framework of cruising sites, that meant going to the actual locations in the city where gay men went to meet each other. An even earlier project, “Christopher Street” 1976, had its entire focus on one location which also happened to be the main public gay thoroughfare in New York at the time. My problem in Delhi was that there was no single road or avenue that was identified as being frequented primarily by gay men and lesbians. Therefore, I decided to make a different visual point in the photographs which was to show that queer people are everywhere in the city. I located my subjects in the neighbourhoods where they lived or worked. This then began to give me a queer mapping of the city.
It is very important to get legal rights established the world over and then to sustain them as the experience in India has shown; in 2013 the law was reversed and it took till 2018 to establish decriminalisation.
In the 1980s I worked on constructed documentary images of anonymous gay men in historic architectural spaces in Delhi “Exiles”. That was a time when the terms ‘gay’ or ‘homosexuality’ were not acceptable to polite society and the media. Back then it was a challenge for me to make a photographic series about humans that did not have a right to exist. It seemed so fraught that I never returned to this theme till I came to live once again in Delhi.
In the early 2000s India, homosexual women and men inhabited spaces like “private” parties. Gay nights at local clubs in Delhi were always sign- posted as private parties in a fictitious person's name. In the intervening years there have been occasions when both men and women, straight and gay have stood up and demonstrated for LGBT rights in public places. Reported by the media of the time the silence was finally broken and increasingly more people are willing to risk being “out” about their sexuality.
With these photographs in this series, I am trying to visualise this latest virtual queer space through a series of portraits of “real” people who identify their sexuality as 'queer' in some way. This time, as opposed to when ‘Exiles’ was being made, people look straight into the camera and we see around them local aspects of where they live or work, inhabiting a more vernacular architectural space. This time they are willing to name themselves. There was a rising desire for decriminalisation in the air by 2005, and this was confirmed by the first legalisation in the Delhi High Court in 2009. Already by 2008 Pride marches had started taking place so it seemed like a perfect time to look at LGBT people in the eye. Here they are guests of an imaginary party, which I have called “Mr Malhotra's Party”, after the ubiquitous Punjabi refugee who arrived post-partition and contributed to the development of Delhi as a bustling commercial capital city.
The photographs were made over several years between 2007 and 2012. They cover a period shortly after I arrived back in Delhi to live after an absence of thirty five years. They also cover a period of intense lobbying to change the colonial anti-sodomy law in India. The 2009 Delhi High Court ruling that sex between consenting would no longer be criminalised was challenged in the Supreme Court and the judgement was reversed. In between, queer people of all genders enjoyed a liberty that was unimaginable and never before seen in modern India.
In “Exiles” I had used the framework of cruising sites, that meant going to the actual locations in the city where gay men went to meet each other. An even earlier project, “Christopher Street” 1976, had its entire focus on one location which also happened to be the main public gay thoroughfare in New York at the time. My problem in Delhi was that there was no single road or avenue that was identified as being frequented primarily by gay men and lesbians. Therefore, I decided to make a different visual point in the photographs which was to show that queer people are everywhere in the city. I located my subjects in the neighbourhoods where they lived or worked. This then began to give me a queer mapping of the city.
It is very important to get legal rights established the world over and then to sustain them as the experience in India has shown; in 2013 the law was reversed and it took till 2018 to establish decriminalisation.