Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
Photograph © Soumya Sankar Bose
I knew I had to work on this project 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 were once gigantic figures of the Jatra, but are now unemployed.
Dating back to the 16th century, the Jatra is a famous folk theater form of United Bengal (Bangladesh and West Bengal), employing dialogue, monologue, songs, and instrumental music to tell stories. Jatra pala, as the plays are called, are enacted on wooden stages without any barriers between the actors and the audience, facilitating direct communication. The plots vary from Indian mythology and historical incidents to something more contemporary, based on social issues.
The partition of India had a major impact on Jatra, as artists in the newly formed East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), a Muslim majority country, discontinued to enact Hindu religious folktales, such as Krishna Lila, Devi Thakurani, Kongso Bodh, Kaliadaman etc. On the other side of the border, artists in West Bengal stopped playing Muslim characters, such as Siraj-ud-dullah, Shah Jahan, Akbar etc. The advent of cinema and TV in the '60s and '70s gave a deadly blow to the theater art form.
In 2013, over 600 Jatra companies employed about 2 lakhs [200,000] artists. However, their situation is now such that they are forced to perform for free. This work is based mainly on the Jatra artists, characters played by them, and the psychology that drives them to be a part of this folk cult form. This project has been made possible by a grant from India Foundation for the Arts under the Arts Practice Programme.
20 November
