1. What is your earliest memory of how or what attracted you to photography?
I had met Swastik Pal in my Chemistry tuition class. Neither of us ever understood what the teacher would teach and soon we became good friends. Once we attended an exhibition at the Seagull Foundation in Calcutta that was showing the works of Ronny Sen, Arko Datta, Shankar Sarkar, and a few other photographers – photographs from their personal lives were exhibited. I was taken aback seeing these images because this was the first time I felt something from seeing photographs. It was also Swastik’s work called My Uncle Tukka that affected me a lot and made me think of photography as a way of storytelling.
2. After earning your degree in animation from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, you decided to study photography at NID. What attracted you to animation?
I always wanted to be a storyteller but found it difficult to express it by using words. This is one of the reasons that I joined animation in the first place. Photography was also a part of the same course and I kept doing both. After completing my animation degree, I decided to study photography full time.
3. How has the experience of studying both animation and photography shaped and influenced your practice?
With the work I do, my intent is to create an experience for my audience. Studying photography along with animation has helped me in understanding different forms of storytelling methods and how they can be used to enhance the experience.
4. In your opinion, is it important to have formal training in photography? Why?
In my opinion, I wouldn’t say it’s important to have formal training in photography. Because many of the photographers I know have had no formal training in photography and they are pretty brilliant. That being said, for a person like me, formal training was necessary. Not only did I get the opportunity to meet different photographers, I also got to know and understand why they photographed the way they did. I am very thankful to Rishi Singhal for designing the course at NID in such a way that it allowed various photographers of different genres, from all around the world, to visit the campus and share with us their experiences. This allowed us to experiment with various methods and finally choose the one we liked. Also, having deadlines and multiple reviews helped to keep me on track.
5. What prompted you to work on Irom Sharmila for your final project at NID?
While doing research for my final project at NID, I came across a newspaper that said Irom Sharmila broke her 16-year hunger strike protesting for the removal of AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Power Act). She began her hunger strike in retaliation for the killing of ten people at a bus stand in Malom, a village in Manipur. This incident was later termed the Malom Massacre. Till then, I had no idea who she was. The fact that I had not known who she was or what had happened 16 years prior made me want to begin my project. I began this work in order to learn what was happening in Manipur. At that time, my plan was to just concentrate my work on the village of Malom, the victims’ families, and follow Irom on her way to the election. My intent was to talk about what had happened on 02 November 2000 and what had led Irom Sharmila to make the decision to run for the election. Until then, I believed that the Malom Massacre was the worst that had happened in Manipur.
6. Why did you decided to work as a volunteer with Extra-Judicial Execution Victim Families of Manipur (EEVFAM)? What did your work there entail? How did the experience help you with your project?
It was on 18 October 2016 that Irom Sharmila announced her political party PRJA (Peoples’ Resurgence and Justice Alliance) at the Imphal Press Club, for which I was present. At the very event, a journalist asked me who I was and what I was doing there. Upon explaining my work to her and how I became interested in any contact that led to the victims’ families of Malom, she told me about EEVFAM, an organization formed by the widows of the victims. The next day, I went to their office and told them about my project and asked them if they could help me with the Malom Massacre file. It was at this point that I asked them if I could volunteer there during my stay in Manipur. They happily agreed to my proposal.
Upon asking about the Malom Massacre file the next day, Neena (former president of EEVFAM) pointed me to a cupboard that contained files reporting 1528 extrajudicial killings, year wise. My job was to go through the data collection forms and update them on the computer. This allowed me to go through every detail that the victims’ families had submitted while reporting cases of extrajudicial killings. The names of perpetrators, the victims’ names, locations of the incidents, and last seen evidence reported by the family members, were all listed. These testimonies and pieces of evidence panned out the magnitude of the entire situation and made me realize that the Malom Massacre was just a single day in 33 years of bloodshed and bullet rain experienced in Manipur. This very experience shaped my stay in Manipur, and I kept reacting to it.
7. Who or what has inspired you to pursue photography and/or continues to do so?
Swastik Pal inspired me to begin pursuing photography. He was my first mentor, guiding me over Skype calls and helping me make edits while I was photographing my first photo story. Since then, many photographers have inspired me. Sohrab Hura, Bharat Sikka, Ronny Sen, Vinayak Suresh, Amarnath Prafull are some of the few Indian photographers whom I really look up to. In other art forms, I am really inspired by Egon Schiele and Franz Kafka.
8. Is there a book, exhibition, or body of work that has really impressed you and maybe influenced your work / life?
The Provoke Movement whose subtitle reads as provocative documents for the sake of thought has really impressed and influenced me and my practice.
9. What draws / drew you to the subject matter you are pursuing in your current work?
The fact that I had no idea who Irom Sharmila was till the time I found out about her from the newspaper bothered me a lot. It made me think that even though I was from Calcutta, I had no information about my neighboring state of Manipur. And the fact that she broke her hunger strike and had decided to join politics made me want to talk about what happened 16 years before that prompted her decision. In a way, this project was to make myself aware of what was happening in Manipur.
10. Do your projects typically run in parallel, or do you focus on one project at a time?
I prefer to work on one project at a time. My first project started in early 2016 in Manipur and I worked on it till the middle of 2018. I then began my work in Kodaikanal, which continued till mid-2019. I returned to working on Manipur in June 2019, and this gap gave me a fresh mind to look at the work again and helped me make my final edit.
11. How do you measure success or that a body of work is going well?
I keep experimenting with the different edits I make until I reach a point when I am satisfied with how the work might make my audience feel. Till then I have no clue how the body of work is going. After that, I send it to a couple of my mentors and friends and take their suggestions and work on their feedback.
12. You received the Alkazi Foundation for Arts Photo Book Grant in 2017 for your book 1528. What was the process of designing the book like for you, given the fact that you have studied design, animation, and photography?
I went to Manipur thinking that the Malom Massacre was the worst to have happened there. The day I opened that cupboard at the EEVFAM office in search of the Malom Massacre file, I came across 33 years of violence all stacked up in those shelves.
I was shocked to see the enormity of the whole issue of extrajudicial killings and this is exactly what I wanted to invoke through the format of a book. That day, my whole project shifted from just focusing on Irom Sharmila to the idea of Fake Encounters. I have designed the book myself, with a cardboard cover using loose sheets, folded to A4 size, and held together with elastic strings resembling an official folder. The design is intended to reflect my own experience while working at the office. The act of searching and handling old newspapers and other official documents was implemented into the design of the book. The idea was to make my audience feel exactly how I felt when I became aware of the enormity of such happenings in my own country.
I’d like to thank Alkazi Foundation for Arts for awarding me the Photo Book Grant that helped me in producing this edition of the work.
13. You were awarded the 2018 Magnum Foundation Social Justice Fellowship. What was that experience like, and what did it entail?
In 2018, after working on the Manipur project for about two and a half years, I needed a shift. That is when I began researching mercury poisoning in Kodaikanal with which I had applied for the Magnum Foundation Social Justice Fellowship. I was super happy to have been awarded the fellowship that year. Those two months were very intense and exposed all of us to a lot of new learnings. I met other fellows from different countries and got to know about their projects. I also developed an understanding of different social justice issues and the various ways in which they might be addressed, keeping in mind the sensitivity in each case. Getting to attend Fred Ritchin’s classes was one of the best parts of the experience. For all of us, the fellowship entailed doing a project in New York based on any social justice issue during the first month-long visit, on the basis of which the mentors would select us. My mentor was Amy Pereira, who guided me when I came back to India and began working on Kodaikanal for the next few months. On our second visit to New York, all the fellows met again to share their experiences and exhibited in a group show at the Magnum Foundation space.
14. Do you ever find yourself creatively ‘stuck?’ Is there something that is particularly helpful to you in overcoming this?
Yes. I often find myself stuck. And to overcome this, I try experimenting with different media and also take prints to make dummies of them to see how different edits work together. For me, having a physical object in front of my eyes rather than a digital file helps me a lot to visualize an idea more clearly.
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 you from it?
I create work on social justice issues to make people aware of what’s happening in my country and, as a result, I think it is important to get the work shown. I apply to all the photo calls that come my way and I keep writing to different people about the work that I make. I think showing my work is definitely a part of the creative process that helps me understand how my audience feels about it.
16. Do you feel that there are adequate opportunities and avenues to share / show your work in your home country, or do you always look for such opportunities abroad?
Yes, there are opportunities and avenues to share my work in my own country, whether they are adequate enough or not, I don’t know. A few friends and I have been planning to start a moving exhibition in India to share our works in different parts of the country. Having said that, I am also open to opportunities abroad.
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?
To be honest, I am still trying to figure this out. I live in Bombay now and have been trying my hands at various things to help me pay the rent. I take up magazine assignments and have done some film stills as well. Pre-COVID times, I was part of a production company for which I photographed the DIY objects they make for a kids’ show, and also wrote steps on how to make them. However, currently, I am a little uncertain about how things are going to be and turn out.
18. Do you shoot digital or analog or both?
I shoot both digital and analog as I love experimenting with different media. However, the medium I decide to use is very dependent on the project I am doing.
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 think it used to be like that earlier. Right now, I don’t think it is just a Western criteria or standard that is being applied. In my opinion, it is more global.
20. How would an interested collector go about buying your work?
Any interested collector can contact me directly by writing an eMail to me (rohit.saha3000@gmail.com). My book is available with the Alkazi Foundation, New Delhi, and the People Tree, Goa. It is also available at the TIPI bookstore, Belgium, and the Le Plac’ Art Book Store in Paris.
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Copyright © Rohit Saha
20 November
