The photography most associated with the subcontinent often ties into simplistic ideas of what the lives of over a billion people entail. Situated at different points on the axes of socio-economic, cultural, and geographic status, the work of the following five photographers show a sliver of personalities and experiences from across South Asia that push the boundaries of what we’ve come to accept as the general reality of people outside cities. I thought I’d share some of their work here.
Deepti Asthana
Asthana, a self-trained artist, is interested in photographing women in large, open frames that show moments of quiet freedom for her subjects. She features a diversity of women from various parts of the country, concerned only with showing them as they are. There is no glamorisation or implied pathos.The photographs capture split seconds and admit to being one still in a life of infinite variation. In Tamil Nadu, a woman in a light pink sari is shown speaking happily on a mobile phone. A woman from a nomadic community in Ladakh is seen standing with one hand on a local goat. Asthana’s sensitive, honest photographs can be seen here.
Arati Kumar-Rao
Kumar-Rao’ photographs are unique for their commitment to telling little-known stories about India’s rapidly changing ecology. Through reportage and photographs, she has documented the “slow violence” of environmental degradation. One of her reports exposed the compelling story of how people along the banks of the Ganga lose their land to river erosion, but aren’t offered relief funds by the government because erosion isn’t classified as a disaster the way earthquakes and floods are. She’s capturedthe practice of river piracy in Bangladesh where the boats of poor fishermen are stolen and held for ransom. Her work in this field won her the inauguralAnupam Mishra Memorial Medal for excellence in river journalism in 2017. One can view her environmental and nature photographyhere.
Navtej Singh
While Kumar-Rao’s photographs focus on the darker stories in the South Asian landscape, Singh’s work is a highlight reel of India’s remaining beauty. He has the ability to make even a langoor appear majestic against the walls of Orchha Fort in Madhya Pradesh, and to transform a busy, crowded fish auction in Mumbai into an arresting sight that reveals an order within the chaos. The photographs choose versatile subjects such as doors, parrots, bearded and turbaned smokers, the faces of older women in rustic India, the packed bicycles and carts on the roads, and much else. His more polished photographs can be viewed here, and the more informal shots he posts to social media can be seen here.
Prabuddha Dasgupta
His signature black and white style was raw with the intent that every photograph be striking rather than beautiful or comforting. When thumbing through his photographs, one gets the feeling that in his world it was always afternoon in a quiet house. One of his series, Edge of Faith, is a hazy story of Goa’s relationship with Christianity that moves through the intimate spaces of homes to the chapels and the automobiles rusting from the rains. Another is called Longings and is a lonely montage that shows people at their most vulnerable and at their most introspective. His photographs have been collected in books by Viking and Seagull, and some of them can be viewed here.
Shibu Arakkal
Arakkal is the monarch of photo series. Within a particular series, his photographs mirror and contradict one another to create a visual experience difficult to pin down in words. He manipulates photographs with edits that are subtle and masterful in the way they accentuate the story of the photograph – for example, his Constructing Life series features aged skin with edits that weave cracks into the photograph. One of his most stunning works is a series called Four that maps his emotional journey through four decades of his life. It’s narrated through narrow landscape photographs and dreamy triptychs. His work, varied and expansive, can be explored here.