This wasn’t the easiest photograph to take because the boy is in the shadows while his sister stands in a stream of light flooding in through the doorway. But there was something about their expressions – a mixture of mournfulness and faint fascination; their seemingly subconscious holding of hands, and the beauty of the light catching their faces and clothes, that compelled me to capture them.

I admit to having had a fascination with this little girl, so she popped up in a few of my photographs that day (even though I was really supposed to be photographing the final stages of a wedding). I have previously published another one which I’m repeating here, along with some others that I’m rather partial to:

I think that there is a poignancy to such a beautiful young thing in a poor Indian village wearing her misplaced party dress. She will doubtlessly wear it every day until it becomes even more worn and faded than it is now. It is one of those cruel Cinderella twists in this strange upside down world – that the girl who looks so beautiful, even in a raggedly old party dress, is the one that will probably never get to go to the ball.