Gauri Gill is a photographer from Delhi. Her most important and riveting works include her “Family Album” about the Indian Diaspora communities in America (The Americans), village communities in northwest India, and Afghan Indians in Delhi. Over the last ten years Gill has focused her attention on the rural communities of Rajasthan.

In 2003 the NGO Urmul Setu Sansthan organized a “Balika Mela,” a fair for girls in the village of Lunkaransar. It was attended by approximately 1,500 girls from seventy of the nearby villages and included stands, performances, a Ferris wheel, games, magicians, puppet shows and contests. In addition to the usual attractions, mock elections were also held to familiarize the young people with the democratic election process. As part of the event, Gill photographed the participants in a temporary photographic studio.

“At the Mela, I created a photo-stall for people to come in and have their portraits taken, and then buy at a subsidised rate. I had a few basic props and backdrops — whatever we could get from the local town on our limited budget, but it was fairly minimal, and since it’s dusty and out in the desert everything would keep getting blown around anyway. Many of the more interesting props — like the peacock and the paper hats, were brought in by the girls themselves. Individuals came in, friends and sisters came, girls came with their teachers, or their whole class, and later they received black and white silver gelatin prints. Some of the girls who posed for these pictures also went on to learn photography in the workshops that we started in May of that year, and two years later they documented the fair themselves.” (Gauri Gill)

In 2010 Gill returned to the “Mela,” and following a long break opened an exhibition of portraits taken in 2003. Many of the girls portrayed in the pictures were either at the fair again or known to others who attended. Gill took pictures again, this time in color. The photos from 2003 and 2010 are now presented for the first time as a collection in a book of photographs published by Edition Patrick Frey.