Kolkata: City of Joy
Photo by Subrata Datta EFIAP ARPS
In a place defined by density, movement and human connection, my photography in Kolkata turns away from spectacle and architecture to concentrate on everyday encounters; moments of resilience, warmth and vitality that reveal the city through those who live and shape it. Kolkata’s energy is inseparable from its people, and it is through them that the city’s character is most clearly expressed.
The city's epithet - City of Joy - originates from the title of the 1985 book by the French writer Dominique Lapierre (1931-2022) which chronicled life in Kolkata’s poorest communities while foregrounding dignity, humour and humanity in the face of hardship. Over time, the term has become inseparable from the city’s identity, capturing a spirit that persists amid complexity and contradiction. My long-form documentary project in Kolkata - inspired by Lapierre's 1985 book - engages with this idea not as a slogan but as a lived experience, observed at street level in gestures, expressions and shared spaces.
Kolkata: City of Joy by Simon Hill HonFRPS
To be published mid 2027
ISBN 978 1 9993468 4 3
Photography Note
To move freely and work with immediacy, all of these photographs were made using a Leica Q2 Reporter - a robust, full-frame 47.3MP digital camera with a fixed 28mm prime lens. In such a dynamic and often fast-paced environment, this limitation of equipment allows for closeness and continuity, encouraging photographs that are immersive, direct and grounded in the physical and very personal experience of being present within the city. Please see my note on the ethical position of this series, at the bottom of this page.
I am hugely grateful to my friend, the Kolkata-based photojournalist, Subrata Datta EFIAP ARPS, for taking time out of his schedule to guide me around the city he has called home for all of his life.
Photographs
The ethical position of this series
This project is being made in Kolkata between January 2026 and mid 2027. While inspired by the human spirit described in City of Joy (1985) by Dominique Lapierre, it does not seek to illustrate poverty, nor to romanticise hardship. Instead, it focuses on the everyday negotiations of dignity, labour, faith, intimacy, and resilience that shape contemporary urban life.
All photographs were made with openness and, wherever possible, with informed consent. Conversations preceded images. Time was spent with the subject and without the camera. Subjects were approached as collaborators in representation, not as symbols of circumstance. The 'stories' are their stories, not mine.
This work resists spectacle. It avoids isolating suffering from context and instead situates individuals within their relationships, environments, and agency. The intention is not to speak for Kolkata, but to witness moments within it, acknowledging my position as a visitor, and the limits that position carries.
If these images ask anything of the viewer, it is not pity, but attention.