Lingchi, or “dying by a thousand cuts”, was a very brutal type of execution practised in Asia in historical occasions: the condemned individual was tied to a submit and physique elements had been slowly sliced off one after the other. The Indian-born photographer Sujata Setia makes use of this barbaric apply in her sequence A Thousand Cuts as a potent metaphor for a special type of brutality – home abuse. In collaboration with the charity Shewise, Setia spent two years photographing survivors of abuse among the many UK’s south Asian neighborhood. Utilizing saanjhi, the Indian artwork of paper-cutting, she makes vivid crimson cuts in her portraits to specific her topics’ anguish: “I wished to indicate how the scars should not solely exterior however inside,” she says. Having grown up witnessing home violence, Setia initially resisted turning the digicam on herself. “However there got here some extent the place I realised I needed to personal my very own scars.” Taking her personal portrait and putting it alongside the others within the sequence has been “completely essentially the most therapeutic course of,” she says.
• Setia is the winner of the inventive class of the Sony world images awards 2024, skilled competitors. The 2024 awards e-book is that can be purchased at worldphoto.org. Within the UK, the nationwide home abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247, or go to womensaid.org.uk
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