Since April 7, India’s 814 million voters have been participating in a colossal nine-stage, five-week general election to select representatives in the 16th Lok Sabha or lower house of parliament. To document the culture around the longest election in India’s history—it runs until May 12—Benetton Group’s Treviso, Italy-based communication research center Fabrica has commissioned 10 young Indian photographers for a project called Lok Sabha: 814 million votes for India.
Similar to Fabrica’s Iranian Living Room initiative, in which the center assigned young photographers to show how Iranians live, the Lok Sabha project offers an inside look at various aspects of the world’s biggest democratic elections, including Ronny Sen’s photographs of political graffiti, Karthik Subramanian’s pictures of the nighttime rallies dominated by enormous neon-lit candidate effigies, and these images by Gitartha Goswami, which give us a glimpse of the eccentric interior decor choices of campaign offices for political parties big and small in Kolkata in West Bengal.
“A party office is a self-representation where the party’s identity is on show, its way of being a community and how it sees itself in relation with its electors,” the organizers write. For more photos and video of the world’s biggest democratic elections, check out Fabrica’s Lok Sabha website.
Courtesy of Gitartha Goswami/Fabrica
Courtesy of Gitartha Goswami/Fabrica
Courtesy of Gitartha Goswami/Fabrica
Courtesy of Gitartha Goswami/Fabrica
Courtesy of Gitartha Goswami/Fabrica
Courtesy of Gitartha Goswami/Fabrica
Courtesy of Gitartha Goswami/Fabrica
Courtesy of Gitartha Goswami/Fabrica
Courtesy of Gitartha Goswami/Fabrica
Courtesy of Gitartha Goswami/Fabrica
