1. What is your earliest memory of how or what attracted you to photography?
From my early childhood, I have been afraid of losing things, people, and even time. In medical terms, this condition is referred to as chronophobia, a kind of a depression, which is mainly caused from fear of time or of the passing of time. This phobia has actually forced me to start capturing and freeze my own people and their memories in photographs.
2. Although you began by studying to become an engineer, somewhere along the way you became a photographer. How and why did you turn to photography?
I was born and brought up in Midnapore, a small town near the Bay of Bengal. I wasn’t interested in the course at all, however, it was engineering that was instrumental in bringing me to Kolkata. It was here that I met new people, made friends and saw that there was so much more to learn and absorb. When I was in my final year of engineering, I told my parents that I wished to drop out of engineering profession and study photography in Pathshala, Dhaka.
3. Did you study photography formally in a college or university? If so, what was your experience?
Yes, I studied one year at Pathshala, Bangladesh. After this, I attended Magnum Foundation’s educational program, the Photography and Social Justice Fellowship, and World Press Photo’s Joop Swart Masterclass.
4. In your opinion, is it important to have formal training in photography? Why?
There is obviously the option of exploring the larger world out there, but I really do not believe that there is any need of having formal training in photography or any form of art, as it only teaches us what has already been practiced. This creates a sort of resistance within us, to create something entirely new. Going to a school is always good if we understand its flaws otherwise, in itself it becomes a trap.
5. If you were to design a photo program for young Indian photographers what would it look like?
I’m still struggling with my own journey and don’t think that I’m capable of teaching at this point. Also, I am not a believer in the institutionalization of photography or any other art form. However, I am not against it either. In my opinion, an artist can only teach when they’re almost near the end of their own journey, a journey I have just started.
6. Who or what has inspired you to pursue photography and/or continues to do so?
As a result of living in a society that prevents us from living a normal life, the main goal of my work is to imagine a world in which there is freedom to live according to one’s own desires.
Whenever I start a new project, I try to build a relationship with the project and then I move forward with it. This closeness actually inspires me the most and this is what my images and my works whisper. I always try to push myself against boundaries in a different course of action by documenting reality and the psychological impact of the subject matter.
7. Is there a book, an exhibition, or a body of work that has really impressed you and maybe even influenced your work / life?
There are so many books, art works, movies that continuously inspire me every day. To name a few that come to my mind now are the books Deshe Bideshe by Syed Mujtaba Ali and Pretend You’re Actually Alive by Leigh Ledare; Emir Kusturica’s film, Underground; the sculpture, Maman by Louise Bourgeois, Diary, the last short film by Tim Hetherington, the retrospective monograph, You & I by Ryan McGinley, and many more.
8. What draws / drew you to the subject matter you are pursuing in your current work?
In my work, I always try to find an incident, which was never documented or went under reported and, with time, is fading from our mind. Both, my previous and current works stem from the present – with the Jatra performers reminiscing about their forgotten glory. I always try to create a space where people can express their personal experiences and feelings outside of their lived realities. Let’s Sing an Old Song started when my uncle retired from the Jatra and joined a railway factory, hoping to do what he could not as an artist – earn a living. I began photographing artists who are now unemployed, but were once gigantic figures of the Jatra.
9. You have mentioned that your work Let’s Sing an Old Song led to Where the Birds Never Sing. Can you elaborate on the connection between these two bodies of work?
When I was growing up, I witnessed the struggles that people went through during the partition, when they had to move from Bangladesh to India. My family too had a similar fate, as they made the same journey during that time.
However, in my practice I don’t tell every story, and certainly never in a very direct way. My attempt is to always focus on one incident that actually represents the entire, bigger story. I began working on Let’s Sing an Old Song sometime in 2012-13. I had gone to the Sundarbans to document, and worked with the Jatra artists there. It was on one of my visits there that I learned these artists also perform stories directly related to the Marichjhapi massacre, as well as Banbibi and Dakkhin Rai stories. On my return, I started researching what I had learnt there through books and academia. So Sunderbans, in itself, is a very surreal space. I also learnt that there was another island opposite to where I was working, where 3000-4000 people had died 31-32 years back. So that was actually the point when I started to think about my work Where the Birds Never Sing.
10. Would you describe the process of weaving the facts and fiction from existing oral histories of actual survivors of the 1979 Marichjhapi massacre, which you use in your latest book Where the Birds Never Sing?
When I started work on this project by making portraits, I found myself in a situation where I couldn’t just walk in and violate someone’s space. In the work, you see many portraits of the survivors, as well as some that are of actors who have portrayed the characters of the survivors.
For me, the content and the story are of utmost importance. Having said that, I also need to be sensitive towards the survivors and the stories they want to tell. There are some survivors who actually want to come forward, stand and show their faces to tell their own stories – they don’t want to hide forty years after the tragedy happened. And then there are many survivors who want to share their stories but do not want to show their faces – and so, to be able to tell the stories of these people, I started using fiction as a way to tell their stories.
For me the most important part is to tell the story of the massacre, about the incidents that happened and the associated memories. Who performs to tell the story and takes it forward is not that important. When one attempts to tell a story that happened forty years ago, the story has become fictionalized, as so much has happened in forty years; political parties have come and gone, governments have changed, surroundings and environs have changed. When you talk about things that happened so long ago, you see that many things have been added and that there are many versions of the same truth. Even though the survivors and the actors were telling me their true versions of the same incident, for me the project and the book are a work of fiction. Reality is only a small part of the book, and this reality pertains to how the missing people have been shown by using real documents of them that exist. Besides this small, real part, for me it’s about how one re-imagines the past, looking from 2020, and how one chooses to present it.
11. Your latest work, A Discreet Exit Through Darkness, is about your mother’s three-year disappearance when she was barely nine years old. What prompted you to work on this? Can you describe the various photographic strategies that you have employed?
I had been thinking about this work for fifteen years before I actually started to work on it. All these years I have been thinking about my mother’s disappearance. What actually happened? Who did she interacted with? Who saw her last? From what location did she disappear? I had many such unanswered questions. My maternal grandfather actually died of grief in 1971 while searching for her. He, too, was a photographer – an amateur who had taken a lot of pictures. I found around thirty-odd prints from my grandma and also my mum’s diary.
I was about fifteen when I heard for the first time about my mum’s disappearance, which also happens to be about fifteen years ago. Since this is a story that is extremely personal and close to me, I wanted to work on it. However, I never had the courage to pursue it. I wasn’t sure if I had the maturity to look at something so close and personal to me as a project to take on. It was seven-to-eight months into this lockdown, while I was working on designing my book, that I was also spending a lot of time with my mother and grandma. That’s when we started talking and getting into the details of my mum’s disappearance. I then started interviewing other family members as well – my mum’s siblings who all still live in Midnapore, a small town they never really left. I transcribed the interviews, got the prints, and started looking for the location. That’s when I realized that it was the right time to work on this, as my mum is sixty-two years old and my grandma is almost 90. My paternal grandma had died just a few months before, and I soon realized that if I didn’t work on this project now, then perhaps my grandma wouldn’t be able to see it. It became important for me to make this work so that both my mum and grandma would get to see it.
Another thing that I realized after going through the various family interviews, and the interviews of the Marichjhapi massacre survivors, was that all these people who were victims at that time, are today the heroes of their own stories. When they tell their stories, they don’t focus so much on being victims. They focus more on how they survived and moved on from there. And that is what is of great interest to me. I want to show them as heroes of their own stories, rather than as victims; and I think this is where the success of my work lies.
12. Do your projects typically run in parallel, or do you focus on one project at a time?
I prefer to focus on one project at a time. My process includes thorough research of the subjects and spending a lot of time with them to understand them – not only as a photographer, but as their friend as well; also analyzing various thematic aspects.
13. How do you measure success or that a body of work is going well?
If the work that I create justifies the emotions of my collaborators, or if my colleagues and close friends can relate to any of my projects, it is a success. Also, if my project is found to be valuable to some archivists, curators, or academia, I feel that my work is successful.
14. Do you ever find yourself creatively ‘stuck?’ Is there something that is particularly helpful to you in overcoming this?
Yes, this happens to me often. I wouldn’t say that I get creatively stuck – for me it is more a period of blankness. And during this period, I watch movies and read books that are related to the ongoing projects. This pulls me out of the void and provides me with new insights to continue my work.
15. How much effort do you put into getting your work shown? Is this important to you? Does showing your work feed your creative process or does it distract from it?
Showing the work to an audience is definitely important. In my opinion, this is the foundation and the destiny of visual arts. Putting any work out there to be seen is something that every visual artist plans beforehand. This requires hard work and can be distracting at times, but again it is a part of the journey.
16. Do you feel that there are adequate opportunities and avenues to share / show your work in India, or do you always look for such opportunities abroad?
For me, it is very important to show my work in my homeland, in the society that I belong to, as this is the place from where I draw my inspiration, my subjects and themes. Showing my work to them and seeing the way they perceive and react to my work is crucial for me.
In 2017, after the Jatra project was completed, I traveled back to the remote places where these artists continue to live. I installed an exhibition in every location for a day or two and invited one Jatra actor to speak about his work and life. It is important for me to do this, as I want to learn and understand what my collaborators think of my work once it is completed.
On the other hand, it is also important for me to exhibit my work abroad, as I want to provide insight into the structures of our society and country to the rest of the world.
17. We know that fine art or documentary photography is not always enough to make a living. Some do commercial work, others teach. Are there other photography related areas that you work with in order to supplement your living? Some that you would recommend aspiring photographers to consider?
I do not do anything apart from working on my own projects. I guess aspiring photographers could do other work besides photography to support themselves. However, working in this field is very subjective. One could choose to do commercial work or one might not, it is really up to them.
18. Digital technology has changed photography drastically over the last few years. Did you initially embrace the changes or resist them? Do you believe the changes have been good for the medium or not?
In my opinion, it is wise to not resist changes. If one does not accept change, in time the change could refuse to accept you. Being a photographer, what is important to me is to be able to tell my story and express my thoughts clearly, irrespective of whether it is done through the analog or the digital medium. And in any case, it’s been a while since the fine lines between both these media blurred.
19. Do you think there is a universal language that photography uses? Do you think that South Asian photographers are finding that they are judged by western criteria and standards?
I have observed that western photographers influence most young Indian photographers, in the early stages of their careers. I won’t call this a limitation. It’s just that, with the advancement of technology and media, this influence is only growing. And with time, many among them do overcome this. And I feel that this is the case in other art forms as well.
20. With your years of experience, of the lessons you have learned, what is the one thing you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?
I wish someone had made we aware of the famous lines of Isaac Newton, which I understand now and am aware of every day and at every moment – “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
21. How would an interested collector go about buying your work?
Anybody interested in acquiring my work can get in touch with the Experimenter Gallery.
22. If you didn’t do photography, what other career might you have pursued?
An archivist for sure. In school, I used to make little magazines every year, and every issue basically was a collection of my research on an incident from different archives.
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Copyright © Soumya Sankar Bose
20 November
