Javier Arcenillas: Kolkata Sleepers

Photo © Javier Arcenillas-All Rights Reserved

Javier Arcenillas is a Spanish freelance photographer and a psychologist at the Complutense University of Madrid. He describes himself as a humanist, and develops humanitarian essays.

I chose an unusual subject out of Javier's photo essays; one that I personally witnessed whilst in Kolkata a few weeks ago...and that is of Kolkata residents sleeping in the outdoors largely because of poverty, or because they are migrant workers with families living elsewhere. My hotel room window looked over a side street, and waking up at dawn everyday gave me the opportunity of seeing dozens of people sprawled over thin blankets, cardboard boxes and the like. These were rickshaw pullers, vendors of fruits, hawkers and itinerant workers. During the initial days of my hotel stay, I reflected upon the lives of these people, and how difficult their lives must be.

Javier's Sleepers is a photo essay that really strikes a chord with me.

Javier has won a number of international prizes, including The Arts Press Award, Kodak Young Photographer, European Social Fund Grant, Euro Press of Fujifilm, INJUVE, Foto Press Third Prize, Luis Valtueña of Médicos del Mundo, Journalism Doñana´s prize, Luis Ksado, Make History, UNICEF, World Photography of the Year, Fotoevidence, Finalist of the Leica Prize 2009 and Antropography 2010.