Dayanita Singh - Myself Mona Ahmed

Myself Mona Ahmed

While working as a photo journalist, for an article, from The Times of London in 1989, she found a new direction as it started a long-term, career-altering project. Finally, in 2001, her book titled 'Myself Mona Ahmed' was published by Scalo, which covers 13 years of photographing Mona, a eunuch (Hijra) whom the photographer also sees as her friend. "The best part for me was that she (Mona) wrote the text for the book herself, dictated as e-mails to the publisher in Switzerland. So she decided what was told and how," said Singh in an interview.

Singh also had a show of her work on the holy city of Varanasi (Benares) at the Ikon Gallery. These included images from the Anandamayee Ma Ashraam. Singh has spent a month as artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Her dream is to one-day start a museum in Goa. "I also would have liked to make an archive of all the family portraits existing in Goan homes". Some of Singh's work is also shown in some of the big names of photography in cities like Munich and Florida.