Werner Dornik first visited India in 1977 during the hippie revolution. His purpose: live and love. But life had different plans for the 18-year-old Austrian national. He happened to visit Varanasi and encountered people with leprosy for the first time. Ostracised by society, they were forced to beg on the streets.
A year later, he returned to India with a vision to help them. He wanted to capture the essence of Varanasi through photography and in turn sell the images in the West to fund medical treatments for people with leprosy. It was then that he met Padma Venkatraman, an activist helping rehabilitate those with the condition.
