In nineteenth-century Calcutta, a wealthy Indian elite emerged under the rule of the British East India Company. For their homes, they built eclectic Bengali equivalents of industrialist mansions, which blended traditional Mogul architecture with more classical western elements. Today these crumbling villas and palaces retain only a shred of their former splendor, and it seems only a matter of time before they will disappear for good. In this volume, 21 emerging photographers work with Peter Biaolobrzeski to capture the fading grandeur of this rich hybrid structures. In 2007, Germany's respected daily newspaper Sddeutsche Zeitung commented, "If Calcutta had the appeal of Havana, its palaces would long ago have become the subject of various coffee-table books." At last, such a book exists.

Peter Bialobrzeski studied Politics and Sociology before he became a photographer for a local paper in his native Wolfsburg/Germany. He travelled extensivly in Asia before he went back to College in Essen and London to do a courses in Photography and Editorialdesign.

After having worked as a photojournalist for almost 15 years and published world wide, Peter started to focus more on Personal Projects. He interprets his work neither as documentary nor as art but defines it as Cultural Practice. In the last seven years he has published four books, "XXXholy", "NEONTIGERS" "HEIMAT" and very recently "Lost in Transition".

His work has been exhibited in Europe, USA, Asia, Africa Australia and New Zealand. He won numurous awards including the prestigious World Press Photo Award 2003 for his work about Asian Megacities. He has been a member of the Jury of the Fuji European Press awards in 2001 and 2002 and a member of the jury for WorldPressPhoto in 2007.

In 1999/2000 Peter Bialobrzeski has served as a visiting professor for Documentary Photography at the University of Essen. 2002 Peter has been appointed as a Professor for photography at the University of the Arts in Bremen/Germany. Furthermore he has been running workshops around the world. As a critic he regularly writes for "Photo News" and "Freelens Magazin".

The reproduction rights of his work are handled by laif agency in Cologne of which he became a member in 1994. He is represented by Laurence Miller Gallery in New York and LA Galerie in Frankfurt/Germany.