There is no doubt that street hawkers and their mixture within the public space are part of the cultural and historical heritage that India still has to offer. However, street hawking is generally seen as a menace that prevents the future development of the country.
It is assumed that space is just a container for all the things that co-exist inside it. In this way the modern idea of a city well structured, organized, and clean inevitably gets into conflict with the most common perception about what street hawking implies. This series explores the essential presence of hawkers in the city of Mumbai and their influence on the visual perception of public space. The images present both the subject "“ portrait of the hawker at work within the public space and the public space as a subject itself.
By working on the street, hawkers are engaged in an activity that contradicts the supposed ideals of the modern urban space. My intention is to show that in fact, street hawkers assume a reinterpretation of the concept of public space and its appropriate or inappropriate use. They stand for a multitude of individual contexts that by being publicly displayed are merging together into one dynamic entity, while remaining in the same time as separate worlds. This diversity does not represent only chaos, agglomeration and confusion, but also the idea of subjectivity that brings a sense of familiarity inside the modern way of understanding public space, dominated mostly by the efficiency criterion.
Mumbai, India, December, 2014 "“ February, 2015.
