Postcards from the Edge
By Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi Monday, Oct. 11, 2010

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2022544,00.html

In the tight circles of art photography and photojournalism, Dayanita Singh has the serious whiff of legend. Born and raised in India, she earned her stripes from the International Center of Photography in New York City, has shown the world over (including at the Tate Modern) and in 2008 earned herself a Prince Claus Award (the Dutch government prize given for "artistic and intellectual quality"). The recent publication of Dayanita Singh adds elegantly to her emerging canon.

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Singh's eye finds its most unsettling recourse in portraits of the hijra (->-bleeped-<- or eunuch) Mona Ahmed, castrated, one suspects, without full anesthesia ("Blood was flowing like anything," Ahmed writes in the accompanying text). Singh documented Ahmed's life as a member of a eunuch community over the course of 13 years. Most moving is the descent from celebration to grief after Ahmed adopts a child, Ayesha, only to have her eventually taken away. Later, in the throes of loneliness, Ahmed clutches a pet monkey, embracing it as though a baby. Singh captures the scene in a poignant, riveting study of thwarted parental desire.