Meals are Good Medicine: man raises himself up on his bed in "Home for the Dying Destitute" in downtown Calcutta, India. Food is so rare in famine-struck India that some patients recover just through regular eating and leave the home, started 5 years ago when government gave Catholic nun an old Hindu pilgrim's hostel

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Meals are Good Medicine: man raises himself up on his bed in "Home for the Dying Destitute" in downtown Calcutta, India. Food is so rare in famine-struck India that some patients recover just through regular eating and leave the home, started 5 years ago when government gave Catholic nun an old Hindu pilgrim's hostel
Meals are Good Medicine: man raises himself up on his bed in "Home for the Dying Destitute" in downtown Calcutta, India. Food is so rare in famine-struck India that some patients recover just through regular eating and leave the home, started 5 years ago when government gave Catholic nun an old Hindu pilgrim's hostel
Artist/Maker (German, 1933 – 2012)
Date1967
MediumVintage Associated Press wirephoto
DimensionsImage: 8 11/16 × 7 in. (22 × 17.8 cm) Sheet: 10 3/8 × 8 3/16 in. (26.3 × 20.8 cm)
Credit LineGift of Thomas J. Wilson and Jill M. Garling, P2016
Object number2023.12.198
Not on view
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Additional Details

Markings Verso, upper center (stamp, purple ink): [upside-down] "AUG 29 1967 / AUG 29 1967"
Inscribed Recto, lower center (blue ink): circle drawn around "India" in lower margin typed portion of image
Verso, upper left (pencil): "HF-IND-07"
Verso, upper left (pencil): "2500-"
The parish priest Ramonet: "I left for the Ile de Sein with a book on Gurdjieff that was supposed to get me back into shape. I barely looked at it. Thanks to Felix Guilcher, a real, lyrical and discreet hero, a rare friend discovered over there, to a Parish Priest, and to all the islanders, more islander than Breton, I soon felt quite at home, something quite unexpected, indeed inconceivable. Happy and calm, I was protected from the distant continent by a superb and pitiless sea. On Sein, I finally told myself "they'll never get me!". I'll never be able to repay my debt to the Sein Islanders for what they gave me
The parish priest Ramonet: "I left for the Ile de Sein with a book on Gurdjieff that was supposed to get me back into shape. I barely looked at it. Thanks to Felix Guilcher, a real, lyrical and discreet hero, a rare friend discovered over there, to a Parish Priest, and to all the islanders, more islander than Breton, I soon felt quite at home, something quite unexpected, indeed inconceivable. Happy and calm, I was protected from the distant continent by a superb and pitiless sea. On Sein, I finally told myself "they'll never get me!". I'll never be able to repay my debt to the Sein Islanders for what they gave me
Jean-Philippe Charbonnier
Date: 1956
Medium: Vintage gelatin silver print
Object number: 2022.15.197
Hindu Woman with Silver Jewelry, New Delhi, India
Hindu Woman with Silver Jewelry, New Delhi, India
Bill Witt
Date: 1943-1944
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Object number: 2020.9.290
Pilgrim's Progress in the 19th Century, from "Harper's Weekly"
Pilgrim's Progress in the 19th Century, from "Harper's Weekly"
Thomas Nast
Date: published November 27, 1869
Medium: Wood engraving on newsprint
Object number: 2019.13.112
Pilgrims in the foreground, American women in the St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, Italy
Pilgrims in the foreground, American women in the St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, Italy
Leonard Freed
Date: 1958
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Object number: 2021.12.118
Wheat for India's Millions: Indian longshoremen labor long hours with tin scoops to fill burlap bags with wheat on the docks of Bombay. Modern vessels have sped the grain halfway around the world, but at the docks the 20th century slips back to the 18th as dockworkers load wheat bags on turbaned heads and cattle drawn lorries for the trip inland, India
Wheat for India's Millions: Indian longshoremen labor long hours with tin scoops to fill burlap bags with wheat on the docks of Bombay. Modern vessels have sped the grain halfway around the world, but at the docks the 20th century slips back to the 18th as dockworkers load wheat bags on turbaned heads and cattle drawn lorries for the trip inland, India
Horst Faas
Date: 1966
Medium: Vintage Associated Press wirephoto
Object number: 2023.12.196
Women's Lot is Poverty: an Indian woman rests in her "home," in squatter area of Bombay. A girl plays nearby. Other families live in similar shocking poverty. Indian women have followed their husbands from the drought stricken rural homes to the cities where they had hope of finding food and shelter
Women's Lot is Poverty: an Indian woman rests in her "home," in squatter area of Bombay. A girl plays nearby. Other families live in similar shocking poverty. Indian women have followed their husbands from the drought stricken rural homes to the cities where they had hope of finding food and shelter
Horst Faas
Date: March 8, 1966
Medium: Vintage Associated Press wirephoto
Object number: 2023.12.199
Map of the West India Islands
Map of the West India Islands
John Rapkin
Date: 1851
Medium: Engraving with hand coloring
Object number: 1971.55
Map of the Antilles or West-India Islands
Map of the Antilles or West-India Islands
J & C. Walker
Date: published January 1, 1835
Medium: Engraving with hand coloring
Object number: 1971.63
W India
W India
Walford Thomas Bellairs, R.N.
Date: August 1850
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Object number: 1995.26
Place of Sorrow, India
Place of Sorrow, India
Bill Witt
Date: 1943-44 (printed c. 1978)
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Object number: 2020.9.296
Village Children, India
Village Children, India
Bill Witt
Date: 1943-44 (printed c. 1946)
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Object number: 2020.9.302
Muslim Boy with Hoop Toy, India
Muslim Boy with Hoop Toy, India
Bill Witt
Date: c. 1943
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Object number: 2020.9.294