True Life Is Elsewhere

by Christine Chung
In the summer of 1999, when he was only 17, Sohrab Hura's mother was diagnosed with acute
paranoid schizophrenia.

"Life is Elsewhere is a journal of my life, my family, my love, my friends, my travels, my sheer

need to experience all that is about to disappear and so in a way Im attempting to connect my
own life with the world that I see with a hope to Gind my reality in it. Life is Elsewhere is a book
of contradictions and of doubts and understandings and of laughter and forgetting in which I
am trying to constantly question myself by simply documenting the broken fragments of my
life which might seem completely disconnected to one another on their own. But I hope that in
time I am able to piece together this wonderful jigsaw puzzle called life. And this journey will
perhaps lead to reconciliation with my own life." - Sohrab Hura
Until recently, I have developed an obsession over Magnum photographers, Jacob Aue
Sobol and Anders Petersen. Having read all their articles and public interviews online, both
embrace the reflexivity of photography. Photography is not as objective as people think, because
it still demands the personal vision of the photographer. Sobol and Petersens recent work
together, Veins, was my photography bible in which I would willingly lose myself in its every
page; every night, I would flip through its pages under the pale light of my side table lamp. The
grit and grain of their photos are an illusionary experience. I admire their unique styles, and their
emotional closeness with their subjects, but I have reached the point where their unique
aesthetics have lost their magical intensity.
While scrolling through my RSS feed, I come across a heading under the Photography
links; Magnum elects Sohrab Hura as newest nominee. Sohrab Hura is the second Indian
photographer to be nominated in Magnum Photos, a photo agency that Robert Capa and Henri-

Cartier Bresson founded. His emotionally-imbued photos moves me and fills me in places I
thought could not be filled. His photo essay, Life is Elsewhere, is a visual meditation on his youth
and his early life with his mother, who was recently diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Although the
photos are literally of his mother, pet dog, peers and found objects, the photo essay tells more
about Sohrab, whose impetus is grounded in his angst and eagerness to experience life in its
entirety. Life is Elsewhere is a visceral excursion towards the eccentricities of the unknown and
back to the familiarities of his own home.
Looking through the images feels like going through someone's private journal; no one
would have access to these situations except him. After reading Sohrab's Interview in a website, I
recognized his level of honesty is far beyond the capabilities of my visual language.
I had started to hate photographs of people with mental illness in general. Almost all
photographers, when they work on this issue, try and bring out a sense of madness which I
didnt agree with. There is more to people with any kind of mental illness than madness, if at all,
there was that madness. So I wanted to photograph my mother not as a photographer, but as a
son. (Hura, 2014)
I have had problems exploring my own illness through visual imagery because my
approach would come across as either too literal or too abstract. Although I consider
photography as possessing an inherent objectivity and subjectivity, the most important goal is to
tell a story as honestly as possible, and the images will speak for themselves. Kevin, my mentor,
gave me a piece of advice that I will carry with me for a while, especially now as I come towards
completing my own project.
Use your Bipolar condition as impetus and fuel but dont self-indulge and drown in it. Use it to
find synonyms and metaphors in your generation. Expand the interpretation of A Portrait Of
US Float in your world then float outside of it and around it. Point your lens at your peers and
tell the story of youth, your generation. And especially through the eyes of a female. Look and
ponder Love, Lust, Sexuality, Pain, Happiness, doubt, loss confidence, dreams, succss, envy,

companionship, boys and girls and all those other things that make for memories of growing up.
Be brave and honest. Live your life and all encounters you will have, good and bad, and make
images from them. (Lee, 2014)
Bakit ka umiiyak?
I say nothing as tears well up in my eyes.
Ay nako, bata ka lang. Mas malaki pa problema ko kaysa sayo

Dont drown in it.

Revel in it.

Having to live with the persisting stigma of mental illness, especially from the people
close to me, has numbed me to the stings of being misunderstood, and through visual imagery as
my mode of expression, I am able to transform my feelings into something more articulate. I do
not aim to please or force people to understand me through my photos, but it is rather a
confrontation of my own situation; a reflective exercise that sometimes borders on selfabsorption. I do not want to compare myself to Sohrab who has developed his skill of seeing
over many years, but I think our visual languages intersect in many ways; black and white,
camera blur and home and friends as subjects.
His images strike me as alive albeit being litterally still and timeless and more so of the
fact that they are shot in black and white; There are more colors in black and white as Anders
Petersen once said in an interview. Sohrabs unique visual language is purposeful in showing his
narrative, but there is room for the viewer to inject his own experiences into the images; the

monochromatic quality, grain, blur, contrast, and the bounces of flash all work together in
forming this language that is raw yet resolved in its sequencing.
These photos also create a tension when placed next to each other to show a contrast
between submergence and emergence from the water. When I look at them, I feel as if I am the
girl swimming underwater and catching my breath as I stand on shore above the billowing
waves. In the depths of the unknown, there is a vastness that surpasses human comprehension; it
leaves me gasping for air yet I can feel its insurmountable embrace. These photos speak to me
beyond their subject matter and story. I enter the photographs as if they were doorways into the
photographers soul. The emotional and physical intimacy of these photos displace me from my
current state of mind when I try to comprehend what is taking place and I end up immersing in
its ambiguities.
Because Sohrabs days of his early youth were spent taking care of his ailing mother, who was
diagnosed with schizophrenia, he experienced his fair share of angst throughout his adolescence.
Once he got his first chance of venturing out on his own in Cambodia, where he was chosen as
one of the fellows in the Angkor Photo Festival, he was able to relieve his emotional tensions
from his early enclosed life and gained his creative impetus. Like him, I experienced a very
secluded childhood, even until now, and I desire to emerge free from childhood anxieties and
create my own identity, as an artist and as a person. This year, I plan to pass an application to the
Angkor Photo Festival which will be holding its 11th series of workshops this year, 2015. Might
this be my chance to go on my own visceral incursion into the unknown to achieve the same
creative impetus that Sohrab has achieved for his own photography? I consider plateaus as signs
of something greater that is yet to happen.

Day in and day out, depression has become the lingering cloud over my creativity. It has
always prevented me from making photos, but eventually it has become a tool to empathise with
my subjects instead of feeling perpetual sadness. I know that the longer I wait for this
enlightenment, the harder it will hit me in the face; the more obvious it will be to me. I am
diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder and, from time to time, it has hindered me from existing as
authentically as I can be. Both depression and hypomania veer me away from my artistic
pursuits, either in wallowing in my sorrows or in childish recklessness. When the attacks come, I
suffer alone. I know the world exists, but do I really exist in this world that I see before me? Its
as if I exist in my own bubble where I observe everyones faintest idiosyncrasies while I feel my
own isolation in the most intense way. Its like the more I photograph the more I feel my lone
existence, even if I point the camera at myself; I only see a mere impression of my physical
being. Even though this is what I feel when I photograph, I feel my purpose in my role as an
observer as my heightened senses react to the lines, shapes and textures that I see around me.
Jacob Aue Sobol and Anders Petersen pointed their cameras intimately into the lives of
other people while Sohrab Hura pointed his camera to his own life. Although Life is Elsewhere is
only one of two personal works, the way he framed his own life enabled him to produce a strong
personal narrative that escapes the mundanity of personal stories. There are no filler images and
every one of them is telling of how much importance he gives to the artistry and honesty of his
work. Since his works are rooted in a strong personal interest, the images do not lose their charm
and only grow with its enchanting lens-view of the crudeness of reality. Life is indeed Elsewhere
because we have not grasped the essence of life and we can never grasp it while we are here on
this earth. Even in documenting personal life, we cannot encapsulate the entirety of these
experiences, but in highlighting the little glimmers of the human spirit, we can see how much we
are capable; we can transcend ourselves and there is no end to our capacities. Sohrabs, Life is
Elsewhere is a story of human love and its revelations. Amidst Sohrabs doubts and

misunderstandings about his mother, he managed to go beyond these and realise that his mother
has loved him just the same, even in sickness. He constantly questioned himself and through
documenting his young life, he got to the realisation that who he is as a person is tied to his
relationship to his mother and everything surrounding him. Photographs are disjointed
fragments, but when pieced together, they form meaningful web of connections. The same can be
said for people we come across in our lives; they can be distant but over that distance is an
endless spring of possibilities. I hope to reach a point in my work where I can make genuine
connections with the people I photograph. Until then, I will have to keep myself afloat in this
trying life. (1,862 words)