Nowgam, Kashmir, Dec 2016
Originally published on Sep 19, 2018
Most of the times (read everytime uptil now) that I try to present my photographs I’ve always tried to not talk about them, to try and make myself the well appreciated “Man of Less Words”. I wanted the images I make to speak for themselves. Even if there are deeply personal connections that I know and can tell you vivid stories about the photograph, why it was taken, when was it made, and how was it done. These interpretations that I have for my own images, I’ve always tried to hide, a part of me was perhaps afraid that the interpretations might be judged, I’d try and hide behind the most rational seeming explanation than the one which I had in my mind while I was making them.
Kozhikode Beach, Kerala, Aug 2017
I’ve had a theory conjure up, specially about photographing people, or things that you could relate to, that the moment you take a photograph, there is this interaction that happens between the subject and the artist, that specific moment that you can picture in your head as a photographer, when looking at the image, is that of the position of a photographer, their gaze and probably their stance, their mental state. So, the crudest way to put in words about this interaction that I speak of, as probably a middle class townie savarna dude, is that the ghost of the subject enters the photographer at the very moment the interaction happens, the ghost wants to look at itself through the viewfinder, wants to know how they’d look in the photograph and probably try and control itself remotely from that perspective. This ghost then enters the photograph and stays with it. I know it sounds like horseshit. I did say crudest way, though.
I can’t talk about the people portrayed in the photographs a lot of times. I feel like it is not my place to tell you their stories. I’ll support them in telling their stories. I will create interest for them, I will strive to create a space where they can speak. But I won’t ever probably appropriate their stories to promote my work.
Houseboat Hilton Kashmir, Dal Lake, Srinagar, Kashmir, Jan 2017
Borivali, Mumbai, Feb 2018
There have been times when I struggled to understand my own work. Or struggled to explain how I understand my own work. There have been times when I just said the things that people wanted to hear about my own work. And there have been times when I deliberately withheld the information that people would have expected to hear, either just to fuck with them or just because I didn’t care enough to let you know. I’m sorry for the latter, I’m trying to not come off as cold, superior or bored because of my depression. Most of my work has not been done for professional reasons, it’s somehow become some sort of a coping mechanism. I’ve had zero self esteem, it’s not low self esteem. It’s zero. Nothing stays put in me. I can’t believe in anything and I’m too flaky to even stand by myself. I have no clinical proof of my sadness yet. I’ve hoped a lot of my work could’ve been interpreted as desperate calls of help.
Stairs, leading down, from a bright space to dark, Nehru Nagar, Bhilai. Jul 2017
Ramzan in Versova, Mumbai. Jun 2017
Bhilai, Mar 2018
Despite of all of the above I do have some pretty strong opinions about certain subjects. I care about politics of the people. I try to care about the people who fill my immediate surroundings. I try to care for the oppressed who are voicing out their opinions in whatever ways they understand they can do it. I care about the invisible oppression that I face everyday, from entities masquerading as organisations, companies, individuals or even systems. I try and represent them in the most honest way that I can, I think it’s called new objectivism or something that rose as a reaction to german expressionism from the intellectuals of Weimar Republic before it was taken over by the Nazis before the second world war. I think, in 2018, our currency’s steep decline in it’s value is going to force the people to express out more, the better people are going to express themselves, the more validated they’d get. One has to hold the attention of the jobless crowds, depressed families and suicidal kids in whatsoever ways they can. The better you are at entertaining them, the more they trust you with their time and definitely it translates into money. The same money, which has been falling down, now has been associated with you, you the person who is trying to rise up, who is full of promises or charm or both. Populations run to save their culture through cuisine, songs, imagery, and dance. There’s a celebration of the resistance and there’s a celebration of the oppression. There’s no way you can celebrate apolitically, because even that is a political stance. As we march forward in our lives, we are leaving behind packs of hungry wolves, in their sight, the destitute who were left behind, as a collateral for an unasked of a material progress while our spirits still quench for some water.
Borivali, Mumbai. Apr 2018
Brein-Nishat, Sringar, Kashmir. Dec 2016
Dal Gate Market, Srinagar, Kashmir. Apr 2017
On the way to Kashmir after Burhan was killed. Aug 2016
I know, the last titular paragraph, for the photographs that followed, was quite not as personal as the whole thing before that was. It seemed a bit generalised. All I can say is, that I had to write it, I felt like I should, by not saying the general stuff, I don’t want to be the well appreciated “Man of few words”, I probably don’t want to be a man at all, but that’s something I’d like to talk about some other day. I sometimes deliberately want to make people uncomfortable, especially the ones who say truth doesn’t matter, we are living in a post truth world, it takes a lot of privilege to say something like that, and it has to be acknowledged.
Thank you for taking your time to read and look through my work, or a coping mechanism, or a cathartic experience expressed as incomprehensibly as the said work, who knows. The following photograph you’ll see is one of my favorites. It’s a fake bird feather that flutters in Bagheera's heart. Perhaps she ate the bird and the feather just got stuck in her chest. She has bronchitis. The doctor prescribed for her the same medication as mine.
Versova, Mumbai. Jul 2017
