1. What is your earliest memory of how or what attracted you to photography?
As a young boy, I grew up in the idyllic confines of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands – far removed from rest of India, and the world. So, I did not receive much exposure to photography, coffee table books, etc. But I saw my father with a camera for the longest time. As a hobbyist, he would photograph Ma, my brother, and me, creating family records for posterity through beach picnics, etc. He was my medium, enabling a first-hand encounter with the camera. Later, he passed on his Zenith camera to me. He was also a wanderer (at heart) and often spoke about traveling and seeing the world – together, father and son. These are my formative memories. Later, I grew up with the dream to travel and see the world. Photography came in much later, as my medium to negotiate my space with the world.
2. Having attained a degree in commerce, what prompted you to study journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) in New Delhi?
The undergrad phase of my life was lived as a drifter. I had no specific dreams, goals, or ambitions. I wanted to be rich (that’s another story), that’s all I remember. So, I wanted to pursue business management, and had even gotten through a management school in Delhi, when one of my father’s friends advised me to go for a bachelor’s in commerce, to get a sound general footing for an MBA. For a boy who grew up in the seclusion of the Islands, with almost no exposure, not knowing or understanding much, was normal. I had no clue what a study of commerce comprised. But I was constantly interested in two things: traveling and writing. I was desperate to travel through my country and wanted to see it before I died (after I was done with my teenage fascination for the West). That was the strongest impulse that drove me then (and even now). Later, I clubbed the two interests and started travel writing.
Since I also was interested in writing, I had applied to Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC), Pune (didn’t qualify), and Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi. I had just returned to Kolkata from a six-month stay with my Nicobari tribal friends in Car Nicobar and later, working on a turtle conservation project in Galathea National Park, Great Nicobar Island (the southernmost Indian landmass), followed by writing about it. That saw me through into IIMC, but I have always held my admission as an accident, a fluke, which got the ‘black sheep’ entry into the white world. Even at IIMC, I was mostly solo – pursuing my interests beyond the institutional umbrella; I would travel alone, photograph, write, make friends, and keep drifting. Consistently.
3. What did you do after finishing your post-graduate diploma at IIMC, before joining the University of Westminster?
After completing my post-grad diploma in journalism from IIMC (2004), I interned for a news agency that assured I would be sent to the Northeast as a reporter. That didn’t work out. I was also not particularly excited about getting chained to a 9-to-5 job; the very thought suffocated me (and does even now). So, I freelanced for papers for a while; I would travel to the mountains, photograph, and write travel features. Through the help of a friend, I started doing interviews for Business Standard’s advertorial department. That partly helped with the bills.
My photography was very amateurish then. Without any formal training and zero clue that a theoretical side to the subject exists, I would just shoot the way my heart felt – pure passion and zero skill.
On 26 Dec 2004, the terrible Asian Tsunami happened. My home island – Andaman & Nicobar – was devastated. For quite a few days, I had no word of my parents’ whereabouts – didn’t know if they were alive or were washed away by the waves. Our house was bang next to the sea in Port Blair. Anyway, I shortly volunteered with Action Aid, an international NGO, and went to help them with their Tsunami-response program in the islands. That led to the beginning of my five-year career in the development sector, mostly working in the areas of natural disasters, child rights and child protection.
Much later, after returning from London following my MA in photojournalism, I photographed many other natural disasters across the subcontinent including the Uttarakhand flash floods (2013, 2014), the Jammu & Kashmir floods (2014), and the Nepal earthquake (2015), amongst other developmental projects.
4. What did you do immediately after completing your MA in photojournalism?
I worked at a superstore in London for a few months, but returned to India shortly. The beginning was a constant hunt to find work, go to photographers’ get-togethers to acquaint myself with people in the industry. I got a few assignments, but they were too few and far between. It was a struggle. One of the first assignments I found was to shoot for a child labor campaign for Save the Children, given my former association with them over the previous several years of working in the development sector. Later, a small window opened for me to teach photojournalism at AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. It was here that my career in academia began (2011-12). I completely changed their existing syllabus, after obtaining clearance from the Education Council. I took charge of the photojournalism course in MA Convergent Journalism, where I continue to teach today. Assignments were still too infrequent, but I slowly started doing regular assignments for Greenpeace.
5. How has your education at IIMC and Westminster informed your practice?
IIMC was primarily about journalism and writing / reporting. So, I picked up interviewing skills, research and the journalistic ethos from there, a foundation that continues to form the premise for my photographic works.
The photojournalism course at Westminster was more academic – I had to research a lot, write papers, and also shoot – but none of the professors ever handheld us as to how to photograph or helped with improving the technical aspects. I was lucky to be trained by some remarkable teachers like Colin Jacobson and David Campany. I got to hear Tom Stoddart, Mark Power, and Tim Hetherington (a year later, he was killed in Libya), amongst others. We also had a huge library in our Media, Arts and Design campus (called MAD) that was open 24/7. On occasion, I literally lived out of the university library. This institution changed the way I looked at images, slowed down my practice, and helped me to question my representational skills, which frankly, I was lacking then. But it slowly set me on the path that broadened my perceptions. They had sown the right seeds.
6. In your opinion, is it important to have formal training in photography?
With the shift in ‘time,’ and particularly since the advent of 24/7 news channels – photography has undergone a sea change. The audience has grown and matured, but also turned fickle with little time to spare or to reflect. Life is busy and our audience, largely, has gone numb. But most photographers in my part of the world still shoot like it’s the modernist era – value based, chasing utopia – creating descriptive, technique-centric images, following the same old tropes. This needs a sea change for the simplest reason: that our audiences’ sensibilities have seen a sea change. Why are we still resistant, insecure, and clannish? I don’t get it.
Today, techniques are almost a no-brainer. I am saying this from the implicit understanding that anyone wanting to become a photographer has to have a solid command over the grammar of the visual language. It’s a given. Period.
Formal training not only helps in improving techniques, but also opening up the doors of perception. It helps in making a photographer conscious about the myriad ways of seeing, representational politics, ramifications of concerned photography and builds one’s faculties to critically examine imagery – and, hopefully, even one’s practice. Now, this can be acquired independently through extensive self-study or through apprenticeship with a credible artist, but it also is possible through formal education, although it has to be a place with a healthy balance of practice and theory.
7. If you were to design a photo program for aspiring photographers in India, what would it look like? Would it be a degree course? Workshop format? Mentorship format? Which do you think would work best and why?
The answer to this can’t be binary – either this or that. We will benefit most through a mix of all that is very rightly mentioned above. We are in an absolute dire need for a formal degree program, a three-year foundation undergraduate course in ‘photography and art criticism,’ but also a master’s degree. Photography has to enter formal scholarship, and not be left on the fringes as a technical course, which is how it is today, sadly. But setting up formal institutions will take time. Today, we have just NID and SACAC to fill this gap.
Practically, I would begin with a mentorship and workshop format today, where we engage with a small group of mentees / photographers over a long period, hand-holding them (to an extent) while the long-term academic foundations are built over time.
8. 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?
I resisted. I started with analog, but later, shifted (not upgraded) to digital. It took me many years to actually embrace it. When I returned from London after my MA, I did not know how to post-process my images, nor did I know the usage of artificial lights (embarrassed to admit this). Today, I do both, and hopefully my images reflect that. I had to stop resisting and run with time. There’s no alternative. I made a choice.
Whether this shift from analog to digital has been good or not is a redundant conversation, now. We cannot avoid either of the two evils, but must embrace. But I can say that the problem with digital is not with the medium but in how we use the medium. For many photographers, digital means they can shoot a thousand images in a day and delude themselves into thinking that it was a ‘good shoot.’ This causes one to lose out on acquiring hyper-focus – the way we used to shoot with film – less and intensely focused. This is causing the damage to photography – technology isn’t.
9. Quite a few photographers are going back and learning film photography. You also shoot both digital and film. Why do you choose to work in both media?
To be honest, I am very digitally dependent now, but I still dabble with film. I want to experiment more. Nevertheless, I am concerned about the aesthetics in my imagery, which makes me go for film, still. This means that, not only do I have to make an image as a record of an event, mood, or emotion, but I also have to make that image tickle the right emotional spots in the viewers’ imaginations. That’s where aesthetics come in. I have to be mindful of how the image will finally look – its color, tonality, texture, size, framing, materiality, etc, and also be mindful of my viewer’s sensibilities.
10. What usually draws you to work on a certain idea? Does it come as a gut feeling, or after analysis or research? Is it because of some memory? Or something that you are really concerned about?
It always starts with research, but I also research topics that are of interest to me – societies on the fringes, environmental issues, tribes in particular, mostly marginalized sections, conundrum emerging out of lives in our urban megaplexes, etc. My interest in tribes stems from my childhood, where I grew up in a context surrounded by aboriginal tribes, including the famous Jarawa tribe from the islands, as well as my early years fooling around with some of my Nicobari friends (from the Nicobari tribes). Photographing disasters became a part of my life because my parents, friends, our house and property were all affected by the Asian Tsunami. It came out of a gut feeling to go back and work to alleviate the sufferings of my fellow islanders. The beauty of life is – one always leads to the other; we have to be able to see the signs, decode, and run with them. My work with rural communities also comes because of the years I have spent traveling and living amongst tribes from Southern Rajasthan, or doing some research work in Tamil Nadu (during Tsunami) or in Bihar with the Maghaiya Mushahars – most of them from the fringes – quite like me – a boy from the fringes – the remote idyllic islands. I am also drawn by the human spirit and their gracefulness. My seven years of work with the Lisu tribe of Arunachal Pradesh is an example.
11. While working on projects, do they typically run in parallel or do you focus on one project at a time? Multiple projects going on concurrently, or one followed by the next?
It is usually a mix. It is difficult to focus on multiple creative projects simultaneously because of the different aesthetics involved in each of them. Also, as a matter of admission, quite a few of my images emerge out of a response triggered in my dream state. My conceptual work Between Grief and Nothing as a response to the Nepal earthquake (2015) emerged partly out of instinct that I followed, but the aesthetics emerged out of a dream state – my mind was emotionally responding to the indescribable destruction and loss of life that I was witnessing daily during my month-long stay in Nepal. The aesthetics were later shaped as a result of my formal training (theory helps), understanding of audiences’ sensibilities, but also from a participatory approach (an ethos I picked up during my years of work in the nonprofit sector), as well as consultation with a filmmaker friend from Mumbai.
We cannot afford to work on one project at a time. If I did that, then I would have no other body of work made while I continued my work on Imagined Homeland, given that it is seven years in the making (2013-ongoing). But let us be warned that ‘we cannot allow anything including material considerations to come in the way of making a body of work that has to be made with honesty and extreme sincerity.’ You do not philander while you are in the temple.
I am not a hobbyist, but serious about my practice. I am also hungry, creatively speaking. What comes to mind is a closed-door interaction with Roger Ballen at PHOTOINK Gallery in Delhi. A friend asked, “How do we know when to stop working on a project?” He responded, “How do you know when to stop eating?” It’s quite like that. If you are hungry, you will eat. Our system will tell us when to start and stop. The problem is that it needs some training, instinct, and incorruptible hyper focus. If I had more resources at my disposal, and was free from the academic responsibilities of training many young photographers, I would have invested all the time into making new work; I could have run faster, but then it has to be slow and steady for now.
12. Who or what has inspired you to pursue photography and/or continues to do so?
There was no one specific event or person that set me on this path, but an amalgamation of many incidents over time. As I went along with an open mind, I kept exploring, and photography happened en route. Of course, I was introduced to the camera by my father. But I had started as a writer – with the desire to witness and express. I wanted to travel, not like a tourist, but a seeker (khoji), so I became a travel writer, and later, a photographer. I have always been a seeker, and that thirst must have brought me to the shores where I eventually found photography. I like the scope for ambiguity in visual works, compared to writing, which is precise, pointed, and unambiguous. Photography is like poetry; it can also be a meditation.
I distinctly remember abhorring arguments and conflict, or people’s tendency to trump up their voices over others, speaking more and more loudly. I did not like that, but at the same time, there was an instinctive desire to express. Photography is a silent scream, and for that matter a dignified way of expressing (of course, it can get very crass, depending on how mindlessly and unethically we are photographing these days).
13. Is there a book, an exhibition or a body of work that has really impressed you, and maybe even influenced your work / life?
During my university days, I was quite influenced by the honesty in Fazal Sheikh’s Moksha. His strict discipline and research are inspirational. I also like Irving Penn, Duane Michals, Richard Avedon, Cindy Sherman, and Pushpamala N. Ragubir Singh’s philosophy (darshan) has had a significant influence in the way I look at colors and introduce my native socio-cultural context into my work. Having said that, I am personally not certain of my ‘nativity’ – a price I have to pay for growing up far away from any single regional influence in the midst of an ocean. Of late, I am deeply moved by Dayanita Singh. She is quite a maverick – a silent genius.
Within the young guns, I admire Julia Fullerton Batten, Boris Eldagsen, Richard Mosse, Alejandro Chaskielberg, and Sanna de Wilde, but I also ensure that my work does not look like theirs. I love the way Gregory Crewdson shoots, but I find it too clinical and dispassionate, as well, so it doesn’t exactly work for me either. It’s kind of a love-hate thing. I love the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and the Bengali filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta. I am quite influenced by Tarkovsky, as well as Carl Jung, and I also look at the Great Dutch Masters including Vermeer and Rembrandt, as well as Francisco de Goya, Rene Magritte, and Edward Hopper.
14. Could you describe a time when you found yourself creatively ‘stuck’? If yes, then how did you come around to dealing with it?
A wall is a wall. It stands tall and right in the middle, blocking our path. At times, I try to find a way around this wall, at times climbing straight over it by putting up a fight, but at times, I just let it be. Over the years, I have come to learn not to fight it. It doesn’t help. Instead, I walk around, listen to a lot of music (instrumentals), read a book, watch a movie, etc. I go everywhere but to photography. I let the wall stay. Without resisting it, but constantly working on other solutions, I think the ‘wall’ gets bored and leaves after a point. But when I am stuck, I never make an image. I just cannot. The image won’t work; it won’t do what it was intended to do. Creative blocks are like dams built in the middle of a river. One has to find a way to reopen that flow of water.
For example, many of my images in Imagined Homeland are a result of thoughts, ideas, and even images that appeared in my dreams. But they never got made before the time was right. If I haven’t brewed the idea enough in my head, no matter how many times I approach making the image, it just won’t come. My mind freezes, except that I can’t tell that to the people around me. So, I procrastinate, and the team gets more and more upset with my whims and vacillations. They find me a terrible pain, I suppose.
15. When you put together a series of images, please share your process while you are creating the narrative of the story.
I learnt editing from my professor, Colin Jacobson. Then, many years later, Dayanita messed it all up (in a good way). So, I’m kind of relearning. I also follow the way Boris (Eldagsen) edits – no text or words, he just looks at images and instinctively follows the conversations each image is having with the other.
It begins with detachment (or an attempt at it), which means I don’t look at my work for several months after I have shot a series, trying to flush those associated emotions out of my system. For my project Between Grief and Nothing, I started editing only after a year. But this was not as a formula. I was emotionally disturbed with all that had gone into the making of the series on the Nepal earthquake (2015), besides I had teaching responsibilities at the university and, later in the year, I had gone back to Namdapha to work on Imagined Homeland. After returning from there, I slowly started editing my series.
Next, I make a wide shortlist on my computer, then take small 5×7 inch dummy print-outs, and spread them all over the floor. Then the fun part starts – looking at them and engaging with them over the next few weeks. Sometimes, it takes longer, and sometimes it just comes to me. I’m slowly getting better at listening to what the images whisper. Admittedly, I find it easier to edit someone else’s work as, over the years, I have helped many young photographers edit their projects.
16. How do you measure success or that a body of work is going well?
I don’t have a particular yardstick, but I have consistently had these two guiding parameters. One, as an artist, have I done justice to the story? In terms of representation of the community and/or issues, the right aesthetic, freshness, innovativeness with which the artist has tried to deal with the clichés and yet present it in a responsible but fresh manner. Also, the work has to be honest and definitely not contrived. We can smell it when one is forcibly trying to appear clever.
Next, in terms of worldly success, I am quite interested in the audience response, and thus, I look for indicators. Today’s audience has become terribly passive, and if a work can make them actively engage, even momentarily, I consider that a success. On several occasions, I have seen audiences taking selfies with my works. While that is flippant, in contemporary parlance, it’s also an indicator.
Artistic ingenuity and audience reception, both are vital indicators.
17. How much effort do you put into getting your work shown? Is this important to you? If so, why? Does showing your work feed your creative process or does it distract from it?
I have spent the last 10-odd years working on finding my voice mostly away from the world’s gaze. It is only now that I am stepping out. Showing my work around is crucial for artistic as well as professional growth. The work acquires an agency when it’s shown around – like a life of its own. Through the exchanges that happen over showcasing one’s work, sometimes new ideas and directions germinate. It is exhilarating when that happens, for it is in that precise moment that we grow a bit more as an artist.
With Imagined Homeland, there is a greater need and urgency to show this work widely. The Lisu tribe (of Arunachal Pradesh) being represented through this work, might have a possibility to tell a few outsiders that they exist. They have lived, suffered and died in obscurity for decades, and one of my personal objectives with regard to this work is to take their word around. I have done lectures, artists’ talks and even conversations in smaller gatherings in the hope that a few more people will get to know about the Lisus. My ultimate dream through this work is that it might someday motivate a group of anthropologists, researchers, journalists, poets, writers, etc, to live with them and include them in their work. It is a dark space when you know that you are not ‘included’ in the fabric. They are a beautiful community from whom our urban world has a lot to learn, all the more given that we are headed for doomsday in this unsustainable world. We have to tell them that they are not alone, and that we care.
18. 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?
The avenues for showcasing one’s work in India, though deficient, are growing. It is an emerging market. There’s a resurgence of photo and art festivals. The problem is the revenue end of it, as none of these festivals pays an artist fee. Patronage is almost dead, or else comes at its own price. So how does an artist survive through the initial struggling years without cash generated through the work/s? S/he then has to resort to photographing weddings and other odd jobs for sustenance, which again takes one away from the primary dharma of the creative pursuit. We invest years into making a work, as well as pumping funds into it, but all we get in return is visibility and the hope that someone influential might like the work and take the artist under her/his patronage. This is not a sustainable model. I fear that we might lose some promising artists / photographers to this struggle and systemic exploitation.
When an artist suffers, art suffers, as do the art institutions.
19. Do you think there is a universal language that photography uses? Are Indian photographers finding that they are judged by western criteria and standards?
Photography has always suffered this misnomer that ‘it is a universal language.’ As a medium using visuals, either on a canvas (paintings), or on a screen, wall, etc – painting and photography borrow from, and tap into the same language system – the medium (refer. Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory on semiotics). Although its tools of the trade and craftsmanship differ.
Let me explain this in detail.
The walls of a frame in either photography, painting, or cinema are the same – four boundary walls – the sole land in which the artist will plough and yield his/her harvest. Now, what gets received and perceived by the audience depends upon what all exists within that frame, and what those objects / codes within that frame signify. But what an object, textile, color, fabric, etc, mean is always local and not universal. The meaning of the color red, yellow, or black, in India, China, and other parts vary, as they are culturally dependent on the etymology of an object or color’s meaning. For that matter, usage of the color black in auspicious occasions vis-à-vis, for example, a Hindu or a Sikh wedding and that of a Christian wedding, will vary. The differences in the interpretation of a code are not just dependent on geography, but also on historical, sociological, religious, cultural, and economic attributes.
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?
That this is all Maya and a way to get out of it. But apart from that, I wish someone had told me way earlier that I was meant to become a photographer. I could have saved so many years straddling between different roles, self-doubting, struggling, failing, etc, but instead could have dived straight into photography. However, I am also aware that my photography today is a cumulative result of all those experiences I have had over the decades, most of them non-photographic in nature.
21. How would an interested collector go about buying your work?
Directly through my website www.desharbendu.com or by writing to me at de.sharbendu@gmail.com.
22. If you didn’t do photography, what is the next best thing you would like to be doing?
I would be teaching art. I love working with young people. Their energy and passion infuses me with hope for a better tomorrow. I am quite naive (smiles) and an optimist that way. But apart from that, I long to find a quiet place for myself in the mountains and sustainably live there – in peace – teaching children, walking around and working with local communities. In short, doing something to stay relevant as a small spoke in the larger wheel. Maybe I will go back to Miao and live with my Lisu friends. Who knows?
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Copyright © Sharbendu De
20 November
