The 38-year-old woman behind the lens, a Cleveland native who settled in New York ten years ago, received her first camera from her father when she was ten years old. "I got into photography because there was nothing else to do as a kid in Ohio," Sondhe says.
But unlike most, who would be content to snap pictures then drop the film off at the local drug store to be developed, Sondhe set her sights on an unfinished room in the house, asking her father if she put up drywall and painted it, would he let her convert the space into her own darkroom.
He agreed. "I'd go there in the evenings and sometimes next thing, my father would be banging on the door saying 'It's 6 am, do you realise you've been there all night?' " But her parents were pleased nonetheless, as Sondhe later got involved with the photography for her high school yearbook. "I think Mom was relieved that I was staying out of trouble."
Sondhe's mother Dolly grew up in the Mumbai suburb of Khar. Her father Ratanjit, originally from Bikaner, studied at Akron University. Her parents had come to Ohio from India at a time when there were few other Indians in the state. The couple settled in Cleveland, raising their daughter in a suburb bearing a name that sounds right out of a David Lynch movie: Chagrin Falls. To this day, Ratanjit will say 'I'm the original Cleveland Indian!'
Image: A Koliwada mithaiwala (left) and Billy's Bakery in New York
Also Read: 'I am a novelist, not a historian'.
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