India, New Delhi

"Anything is possible in India", I was told this by an Indian riksja driver during my first trip to India in 1995. I've kept returning to India since then. Motivated by a strange love-hate relationship with this enormous country. Enormous in beauty, but also enormously ugly. In the end for me there's more love than hate, but it's a small margin.

Constant chaos

Before I came to New Delhi for Streets i've thought a lot about how i was going to capture the essence of this love-hate relationship in only one image. There are more than 1.1 billion people in this country. How do you show something that big? Before I came I decided that the constant chaos in the streets would be clear enough. But when I went to Chandni Chowk the first morning I saw this strange scene. I decided that this shows the essence of what I think about India much better.

Extreme poverty and extreme wealth. Very high development and scientific achievements, India has a space program and nuclear weapons. But in the streets people actualy die in front of you. 25% of the population lives below the poverty line. A third world country with a space program?

Every morning on Chandni Chowk 3000 people are being fed by their fellow Indians. An immense line of people forms and food is distributed. Not by the government but by 300 families that work all night to prepare it and hand it out the next morning before they go to their jobs. That too is possible in India.