Different World, A (seagull)

This volume is the outcome of a project under the Human Rights Project Fund of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK, organized by the British High Commission and the British Council to create awareness about the one lakh street and disabled children in Kolkata who are deprived of their basic rights. Fifty-five young people participated in a photography workshop, after which they went out and took their own photographs of daily life in the city, photographs with a distinctive perspective all their own. A Different World is a book of photographs and life stories which looks at the city through the eyes of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who have very early in life been forced to face the hard socio-economic reality of exploitation abuse, neglect and disability, with all its consequent emotional and psychological outcome. Their voices describe their points of view, their experiences, their own stories of living in a city most of us never see. These are accompanied by interviews, with NGOs and individuals working with these children, which provide the socio-economic framework against which their stories and photographs can be viewed.