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Odds & Ends

In Search of the Muse
When we think of what a muse is, whether it is to do with music,
art or photography, we often relegate it to the artist’s, painter’s or
photographer’s obsession with a subject that is spurred by love
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or infatuation; often towards an individual, thereby assigning
a myopic view of what a muse is. We forget that a muse has
nothing to do with the nature of the subject and has everything
to do with the strong affinity that we develop towards it.

The muse plays an integral role in the journey of an artist, in this

case, of a photographer, as it provides the intent and purpose
required to photograph. The muse doesn’t have to be constant,
it can change as the photographer evolves. The muse doesn’t
have to be a person, it can be absolutely anything around the
photographer. The muse doesn’t have to take the shape of a
physical form, it can be a feeling that the photographer chases.

The Disposition of Urban Rejects

It could also be the emptiness of the loss of a muse.

Better Photography reached out to five photographers—

Chirodeep Chaudhuri, Aashim Tyagi, Chandni Gajria, Nitesh Chirodeep Chaudhuri discusses a methodology that begins from an
Mohanty and Harikrishna Katragadda—who delve into unsolicited source and how it can transform into a full-fledged project.
the process of how they arrived at the important juncture of

H
ow does one photograph a
discovering or realising or suddenly encountering their muse.
city? Let’s say, one like Mumbai
Chirodeep Chaudhuri
which is my muse? All cities
Whether it’s public
clocks, train commuters are a network of information,
or cafe sitters, he is on constantly throwing up signals.
the constant lookout for These signals can be visual and aural (or
the seen that is unseen, even one of smell, if you have a nose for it,
mostly in the city that he that is). For any photographer like me, as
calls home, Mumbai. with any other ‘creative mind’, it is critical
to understand that the challenge lies in
how well we are able to read these signals.
Let’s think of these signals each as dots.
The trick, then, is to be able to connect
these dots in newer or unpredictable ways
to create a piece of communication that
might be beyond the cliché.
I remember an exercise from a time
when I was as a 21-year-old rookie in

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All photographs are advertising and over-confident of my
from Chirodeep’s series talent. Often, when stuck for ideas, we
The Life and Death of would play a game—pick any book lying
Ordinary Objects.
around, open three pages at random
and place a finger on a word, again at
random. So, let’s assume the three words
picked were basket, lampshade and cat.
The problem we were attempting to
find a creative solution to, was, let’s say,
to make an advertisement for a brand
of face cream. So now, we had to come
up with an idea that incorporated these
three words in the narrative. It might
sound foolish, but the fact was that never
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before had an advertisement for a brand
of face-cream been created that included
these diverse objects, and so, in a way, we
were compelling ourselves to think out of
the box.
It didn’t always work, at least not in
the beginning, but it certainly unlocked
our minds, which till then were probably
weighed down by earlier influences of
print ads, TVCs or radio jingles we had
seen or heard, and hence not thinking
anything new or unexpected. Our ideas at
such times would be, quite possibly, ‘more
of the same’.
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Getting my drift? Those random words
provided a trigger of sorts to unlock the
mind, pushing us into a corner to think,
laterally, of the not-so-obvious.
Now add to this an individual’s lived
experience and, more importantly,
observation. The recipe now starts to get
more nuanced. The challenge, however,
with finding an unexpected subject in
the city is that even though my living in it
makes me more aware of it, it also creates
blind spots of things or occurrences so
common that it ceases to catch our eye.
This is where the trigger comes in to play.
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It could be in the form of newspaper
reports, a random comment to a Facebook
post, dinner table conversations, a
sequence in a film and such. My job, as
a communication professional, and a
photographer, is to turn staid facts into an
idea of some consequence that, I hope,
would stick. Our art does arise from sparks
of creativity, but at its core lies logic and
following process, a lot of it may be so
seamless that it’s difficult to articulate.
A story about my city, for me, is often an
exercise in problem solving and lateral
thinking. My search is always for the
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“A story about My wife felt I loomed like a dark cloud.
my city, for The more I began staring at the growing
me, is often number of photographs, they started to
remind me of “decapitated human heads—
an exercise battered, bruised, muddied and torn, now
in problem left to the elements, as if on some medieval
solving and battleground. Like ghosts or spirits they
lateral thinking.” linger, hanging off trees, impaled on a
railing or lying by the side of the highway
or then kicked into a gutter, awaiting
deliverance.” This was a note I had
scribbled to myself in my diary one day.
A silver lining was beginning to emerge
from behind the dark cloud.
This work is by no means complete.
It’s very much a work-in-progress right
now, and in the months to follow, may
transform into something else or may end
here. But I like to linger with work… Let it
pickle… And watch…

ideas that define the Bombay experience.
46 I, now, rarely resort to opening a book to
find my three random words, but I am
always searching for that not-so-obvious
metaphor or trigger.
“On 9 July 2018, a 40-year-old woman
in Mumbai died after the scooter she
was riding hit a pothole. She lost her
balance and was thrown off into the path
of an oncoming bus,” The Guardian had
reported. This was not a one-off accident
in Mumbai. Others similar ones have
followed and been reported in local
papers. The roads minister informed
Parliament that across the country 3597
people had been killed and 25,000 injured
in 2017, owing to accidents caused by
potholes alone. The Supreme Court went
on to say that more lives have been lost
due to potholes than by terrorist attacks.
These shocking numbers have occupied
the mind since it first came to my notice.
It is the unescapable reality for many
Mumbaikars who step out of their home
for work, each monsoon, when the city’s
roads turn into a sort of battlefield from
which we hope to return with least damage
to life and limb.
This portfolio of images emerged as
a response to this state of affairs. I shot
the first of these photographs—a helmet
on a parapet above the entrance to a
building—somewhere around Kurla. It was
just another photograph from a day’s 47
walking and the beginning of the hashtag
#TheLifeAndDeathOfOrdinaryObjects.
Some weeks later, I spotted another
perched on the gatepost of a Thane mall.
Then I came across a bunch of them
near Vikhroli, along the Eastern Express
Highway, hanging from the branch of a
tree like low-hanging fruits. I began to
sense that I might be on to something.
The monsoons too were upon us and
bumpy rides became routine. The annual
stories, statistics and memes had begun
making an appearance in the local papers
and on social media about the BMCs
corruption, gaslighting and ineffective
handling of the situation. Yet again,
I found myself left with helplessness
and anger towards the apathy of
those responsible.
I now discovered a spike in the
frequency of my spottings. A hunt
had begun. As I photographed more,
experimented and floundered in an
attempt at a narrative, I could sense
an idea but was unable to articulate it.
Sleep became furtive. Thoughts of a
“brutal city” started to form and also of
us, its citizens, as “battle-scarred soldiers”
started to develop. Then, words began to
float up but disappeared as half sentences.

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Walking & Daydreaming in Type

Aashim Tyagi talks about his early engagement with music and how it
eventually led him to find one of his many muses—typography in cities.

E
very Saturday I would take
the MRT (the metro system in
Aashim Tyagi
Singapore, where I spent my teens)
is a multidisciplinary
artist working to Orchard Road to hang out with
primarily with my friends on our day off from
images exploring the school. But before meeting up with them,
themes of memory, there were a couple of hours that I’d put
time, displacement aside to go browse CDs and discover new
and nostalgia. music. There were three stores that formed
the trifecta of my routine. The first store,
nearest to the station, was a nondescript
basement-level CD shop that, amongst the
regular releases, specialised in bootlegs, This image: CENTRA,
especially live concerts. I wanted to see Madurai–2010.
if they had a new bootleg of an artist Top: Vishwa…,
I was into. Bombay–2016.
My second stop was always Next spread: THE ME INS
Tower Records, the hip store where the HOUSE, Calcutta–2013.

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cool kids hung out and the cooler ones

worked behind the counter. I would
awkwardly stumble my way across the
store, flipping through new releases, but
I was mainly there to look through their
fantastic magazine section. At the time, it
was one of the few places where there was
a variety of magazines from all over the
world about music, movies and fashion,
which, for a 14-year-old, was a passport
away from the predictability of a rather
dull school life. Lastly, my solo Saturday
morning explorations would eventually
take me to HMV, the more mainstream Brit
cousin of Tower Records, with its massive
multi-level setup, which was the perfect
place to get lost in music. I would spend
hours flipping through albums in different
sections and in the listening booth.
Over the next couple of years, these
Saturday mornings became a routine and
a few remarkable things happened which
left a lasting impression on me and the way
I approach my practice. Music was always
50 present from the time I left my house, took
the train, and then walked between the
three stores. My handy Discman (it was the
mid-90s) would always be piping music
through the headphones, which would
become my soundtrack as I traversed the
familiar path between home and the music
stores, week after week.
The soundtrack changed the mood of
the scenes. I noticed details that would
have missed me otherwise. The weather
too played a part in how I experienced
the space, but the music added another
layer that, in a way, helped me see
poetry. These daydreams were the first
photographs that I made. It felt like
I was able to slow down time, isolate
people and objects that would come
alive in my imagination. Details, earlier
unnoticed, would emerge, and stories
unfurled themselves as I went about my
Saturday routine. This was an “awakening”
of sorts that drew me to the idea of making
movies or picking up a camera and start
photographing with intent. I was content
with the soundtrack and daydream movies
being my side companions, as I eventually
found myself drawn towards a completely
different muse—graphic design.
At some point in my music store
explorations, I began paying attention

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Dise, Calcutta–2013. to album covers and magazines—
the photographs, colours and typography
in it. I could not articulate it then, but
I was absorbing all the different influences
52 just by regularly interacting with them...
From the understated elegance of
Blue Note album covers, the luscious
B&W photographs and crisp typography,
to the chaos of Ray Gun magazine, with its
glitched-out aesthetic. It was the mid 90’s,
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and the propagation of the internet led to
the discovery of Photoshop and hand-
coded clunky websites that I uploaded
to. Somehow, pursuing photography was
never in consideration. Instead, I took up
Digital Arts, when I began college in 1999,
which was a computer driven, modern
version of graphic design.
For a very brief period, the early 2000’s
were optimistic years with regards to
Narayana Coffee,
Madurai–2010.
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human relationship with technology, an
absolute faith in everything digital, an
unchecked spread of internet services,
and even the emergence of social media
as a tool to connect. Graphic design was
also undergoing fundamental changes at
this time; software was becoming easier.
Everything was web first, which did not
spare a lot of time for consuming craft-
driven skills in pursuit of the now.
Photo manipulation is not new tech and
is as old as the medium itself, and there
is no objective truth in a photograph.
But what Photoshop and modern
design unleashed was of a seismic level.
The ability to morph, layer and distort
images with ease was novel and powerful.
Also, digital cameras became better and
cheaper which made it easier to import
photos directly onto a computer. It also
made photography democratic. No longer
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was it necessary to spend a lot of money B. Merwan & Co.–
buying film and getting it developed or Bombay, 2014.
devoting time and energy in learning
the process. I carried a camera on me at
most times, documenting things I found
of interest and to use these photos as
layers and textures for my graphic design
projects. Making photographs on-the-go
had never been as easy as it was now, that
too, well before the first iPhone came
into being.
I quit my professional design career
a decade ago after experiencing a
spectacular crash and burnout. All the
things that drew me into design, the
innovation and technology had become
a crutch. I realised that people barely
paused to reflect on what they were doing
and the over reliance of software made
me uncomfortable. I couldn’t keep up,
and then one day, I quit. The following
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weeks and months were unsettling at first,
as I tried to figure out what to do. I didn’t
set out looking for inspiration, but it just
happened that I always had my camera
with me. It’s a cliché, but slowing down
let me connect with the world around
me. The routine of walking the same
neighborhoods over-and-over, listening to
music, reminded me of my teenage years,
where I’d shuffle between the three music
stores and daydream... Except that this
time, along with the music, I had a camera
helping me steal these movie scenes from
the ether.
I didn’t set out to become a
photographer, but images (and cinema)
have always played an integral role
in my understanding and practice
of design. Now the reverse is in play.
I am inspired by the visual culture of
cities, abandoned spaces and modern
architecture; Landscapes that are layered,
distorted portraits and limitations of
Xerox Canon, modern technology. I often find that
54 Calcutta–2013. my best inspiration comes from the
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center of a contradiction. I use modern
cameras (phone, mirrorless, toy) but with
an analogue approach. I am not merely
interested in nostalgia, but to capture
the passage of time, a point of no return.
City signs barely hanging on in a changing
landscape, found broken objects that have
no value because they can’t be polished
back and occupy space on a showcase, faces
that are obscured behind layers or shot in
total darkness, but not photoshopped.
Photography is undergoing a
tremendous change, so much so that they
say that video is the future. It may very well
be true, but for me, modern cameras have
enabled the making of infinite pictures.
These individual stills form an alphabet
from which I wish to tell stories by making
books, zines, prints and even new media,
combining my training as a designer and
my learnings as a photographer. The muse
has always been the tension between the
known and the unknown. Who knows
what happens next. But I have the perfect The Basu Factory,
soundtrack for the journey. Calcutta–2013. 55
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Chandni Gajria
She enjoys watching
movies and listening
to songs on loop.
Her current favourite
musician is Shamoon
Ismail. Chandni
eventually hopes to
create installations of
her work. She currently
lives in Bombay
with her 2-year-old
cat, Bamboo.

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Seeping in Through the Cracks

Chandni Gajria reiterates how sometimes finding a muse means
peeling off the layers and really listening to yourself.

R
ainer Maria Rilke’s book, Letters to
a Young Poet, was instrumental in
preparing me to take the plunge
into exploring my own vision as
a photographer. But much before
that, Wong Kar-wai’s poetic and visually
rich movies had already begun to influence
the way I thought, created, even wrote.
Years later, I came across Rinko Kawauchi’s
work in her book Illuminance. There was
something delicate about the images that I
couldn’t shake off… almost poetically fragile.
The images in Illuminance, and in most of
Rinko’s work, sing like a song, a melody that
speaks of the impactful narrative. To create
something so powerful, something that truly
moves you, be it Rilke’s words, Wong Kar-
All photographs are
wai’s cinema or Rinko’s photographs, can
from Chandni’s series
only be done if the work comes from a I was Here for a Moment
personal space—the personal within you. and Then I was Gone.

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“To create
something
so powerful,
something that
truly moves
you, can only
be done if the
work comes
from a personal
space—the
personal
within you.”

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The most powerful muse we have is
ourselves. Unraveling your own self and
your own mind is the most challenging
thing an artist can do. How do you feel when
you look at life around you? What attracts
you? Attraction to a fleeting movement of
the curtain in a room, of someone’s footsteps
across the hall, of a crack in the window
glass through which ants crawl over the
wall… are all indicative of who we are in that
moment. As our feelings and mood change,
so do our thoughts. And these thoughts can
translate into our work. Into the words we
write, the music we consume, the movies we
watch, and the art we create. While speaking
to a journalist of his work Sleeping by the
Mississippi, photographer Alec Soth talks
about how he is drawn towards certain
people and why he chooses to photograph
them. “It isn’t too complicated. I drive
around. I sit in donut shops. Walk malls.
I look at people. Once in a while, someone
catches my eye. Why? It is a hard thing
to describe, but I think it is similar to the
feeling you get when you see, you know,
62 the attractive person across a crowded
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bar. Why is that person attractive to you?
“The most
Some of it is culture, some of it is your own
upbringing, etc. It is personal. I’m kind of
powerful
tuned into this attraction. And when I feel it, muse we have
I approach the person.” is ourselves.
I talk about attraction here because that’s Unraveling your
what most art is. It is being attracted, not
romantically in the traditional sense, but
own self and
to something within you. It could be love, your own mind
yes, but it could also be anger, frustration, is the most
helplessness, hope, loneliness. It then challenging
depends on the artist on how well they are
able to listen to themselves and allow their
thing an artist
vulnerabilities to be unraveled and seen. can do.”
There is an escape to let the chaos in the
mind sing. Once you start peeling the layers
off, you can’t stop. Vulnerability is addictive
and can get repetitive. Louise Bourgeois
fueled the complex relationship she shared
with her mother, and a father whom she
hated, into her sculptures. Yet, each piece is
significantly diverse.
Time. A body of work exposing one’s
feelings, one’s fragility, takes time. Time to
confront, time to accept, then time to build
that work, and time to let go. 63
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Nitesh Mohanty
is a visual artist
who works at the
fluid intersection of
arts, culture, media,
education and
self-reflection.
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In the Presence of Absence
Nitesh Mohanty dwells on how the brightness of life and the
inevitability of death influences his way of seeing.
S
he would often ask me, “Why do
you photograph me so much?”
Although I’d always shrug
away without giving her a
definite reply, we both knew
the answer. Isn’t it strange how much we
understand the unspoken…? I’ve often
found silence an inexplicably powerful
tool of expression. Perhaps much in life is
enunciated through the implied instead of
what’s spelt out in words.
The dreamlike, silent moments from the
films of Andrei Tarkovsky, the vast passages
through which we confront time sculpting
itself to form poetry out of the remnants
of his memory. The silence between two
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notes of a piano from the Gymnopedies
of Erik Satie often reminiscing things
that we might have lost over the many
monsoons of our life. The invisible coats
of silence painted upon the colour fields
by Mark Rothko... I’ve discovered much
within the presence of absence.
15 January 2007, my wife, Diya was
diagnosed with cancer, it was a low-grade
astrocytoma around the right parietal lobe
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of her brain and from that day onwards
my relationship with life transformed.
The question that loomed large over
my consciousness was—how does one
continue to see the beauty in all its infinite
forms while being engulfed within the
inevitability of death? Call it an unruly
tryst with destiny, I became profoundly All photographs
are from Nitesh’s
aware and acutely sensitive to everything
upcoming photo book,
around me—the soft murmur of dawn titled Nowhere.
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upon the walls of our bedroom, the
fleeting presence of the sparrow and the
birdsong by the window sill, melancholic
topographies formed through creases
and wrinkles, the whithering skin, pores,
poems and blemishes. In this heightened
sense of being vividly presented with life as
I had never seen before, I began traversing
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through the light into oblivion and two
things kept me afloat and alive, writing
and photography.
At times there’s a desperate need to
hold the ephemeral, to contain all that’s
brimming out from the periphery of our
existence, to embrace everything that’s
seemingly precious and then as you look
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around, even the most insignificant crack
on the wall feels like a reminder of our
fragility, the shrivelled flowers within
the vase speak of how beauty is at once
momentary and yet eternal. The scatter
of dead wings remind us that everything
we love will soon cease to be. I’m often
reminded of Nan Goldin, who once said,
“I used to think that I could never lose
anyone if I photographed them enough.
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In fact, my pictures show me how much
I’ve lost.”
For me, photography is an extremely
personal way of having a conversation with
my surrounding. It allows me to use the
camera as a way of asking questions and all
that I’m seeking is an image for everything
that I feel in that very moment. And even
if what I behold is blurry, undefined and is
shrouded with a haze of uncertainty, and is
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incomprehensible, so be it; because that’s
exactly how life is. Isn’t that the reason why
we write poems, create art, make images, in
pursuit of making sense of the unmeaning.
Words and images are often empty, devoid
of any purpose till we pour our emotions
into them, and in doing so, we breathe
meaning into them.
I’ve often found solace within the
obscure because there’s so much that we
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will never know, no matter how much
we try to comprehend. Between feeling
something as intensely and photographing
it, much is lost, but no matter how
unavailing it might seem we must still try
and hold everything dear. The debris of
life, crumbs of love, remains of the day,
fragments of loss, bits of togetherness and
pieces of solitude—Where else do we go in
search of a muse?
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You Can’t Step into the Same River Twice

Moved by the cruel transformation of a city he once loved, Harikrishna
Katragadda used film to portray the near lethal toxicity of its waters.

Harikrishna
Katragadda
is a photographer
whose work explores
communities,
environments, and
personal memories.
Poor families who
cannot afford to buy
enough firewood for
cremation, dump
partially burnt dead
bodies into the Ganges
river in India. (Cyanotype
print on paper,
29.7cm x 42cm, 2016).
A
nyone who has printed an
image in a darkroom knows the
magic of analogue photography,
which digital cannot match.
I belong to the last generation of
photographers who learned photography in
the darkroom, using chemicals to develop
the film and print, just before the practice
switched to digital cameras, Photoshop and
digital printers. Cyanotype print-making,
in particular, reminds me of why I fell in
love with photography in the first place.
Its intricate process brings me immense
satisfaction as an artist.
It was during a workshop on the
cyanotype process, when our instructor
Brian Potts, mentioned the importance of
using distilled water to mix chemicals to
get the Prussian blue tones. That remark
got me thinking about my struggle with
black and white darkroom chemistry, where
I mostly mixed chemicals with tap water,
and not distilled water, as is recommended.
I wondered how off the colours would
be from the expected output if one were
to use contaminated water as an extreme A scavenger dives into
experiment. It struck me then that the the river for coins and
medium could be tailored to make a pieces of molten gold and
silver at Manikarnika
statement about pollution. The question ghat in Varanasi.
remained—where? More than 80,000
When I first visited Benaras as a kid in the people take a dip
in the Ganges
late 1970’s, the ancient rituals in the open,
everyday, in Varanasi.
along the bank of Ganges, left a powerful Officials admit that
impression on me. A city of extremes, it is a the water quality
visually charged place which has attracted of the river is most
unfit for bathing
great artists like Ram Kumar and Manu
purposes. (Cyanotype
Parekh, and photographers like William print on paper,
Gedney, Raghubir Singh, Raghu Rai and 29.7cm x 42cm, 2016).
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Michael Ackerman, who made books after to a dumping site for untreated city sewage
a long period of shooting there. I went and dead bodies. The sight of an unclaimed
back in 2006 to have my pleasant memory still-bleeding body casually disposed of in
of a serene Ganges to be replaced with a the river by the local police shocked me.
highly polluted river. It had been reduced It was that intensely revolting moment

Cyanotype print
bleached with chromium
compounds. Many illegal
glue production kilns in
Jajmau, in Kanpur city,
use leather containing
chromium that
contaminate the soil
and groundwater.
Kanpur is one
of the most polluted
cities in India and has
been the hub for leather
production since the
British established
tanneries in the
19th century. (Cyanotype
print on paper,
29.7cm x 42cm, 2016).

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This image:
Cyanotype print made
with contaminated water
and soil collected at
Manikarnika ghat, the
largest cremation ground
in Varanasi, India.
Most of the 30,000
bodies cremated
annually in Varanasi
are burned here.
(Cyanotype print and
mud on paper,
29.7cm x 42cm, 2016).
Bottom right:
Cyanotype print made
with foam from irrigation
water released from
the effluent treatment
plant in Jajmau, Kanpur.
Even after treatment,
the water contains
Hexavalent Chromium, a
highly toxic carcinogen.
(Cyanotype print
with Chromium
74 compounds on paper, 75
29.7cm x 42cm, 2016).
Image on the left:
Cyanotype photogram
portrait of a tannery
worker in Jajmau,
made with leather pieces.
Chromium compounds are
used to process leather
in the tanneries, and
Hexavalent Chromium—a
known carcinogen—
is released as a
by-product. (Cyanotype
print on paper,
29.7cm x 42cm, 2016).
Following spread:
Workers bleaching
leather with chromium
compounds inside
a tannery in
Jajmau, Kanpur.
More than 50%
of the tanneries in
Kanpur work outside
the purview of the legal
pollution control norms.
(Cyanotype print
with Chromium
compounds on paper,
29.7cm x 42cm, 2016).
which also got me thinking about a way to also one of most polluted rivers in India.
photographically address my love and hate Benaras has one of the most contaminated
for this city. It was the meeting of these two stretches along the river’s 2500 kilometer
ideas that led me to create You Can’t Step into journey from the Himalayas to the Bay of
the Same River Twice. Though considered Bengal. It is also one of the world’s top ten
holy by millions of Indians, the Ganges is rivers contributing to plastic pollution in

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I wanted the images incorporating At a fundamental level, I believe in

pollutants and found materials to produce human rights for everyone and equitable
a visceral reaction in the viewer, by evoking distribution of resources in a society.
A bleached Cyanotype the way toxins seep into our skin and body, These are also deeply linked to
print of leather refuse- like they do to our environment. Using site- environmental justice. In the name of Toxic foam from
dumps containing specific materials in the print-making urbanisation and development, it is mostly irrigation water
chromium compounds. released from the
process can lead to unexpected results. the poor and marginalised communities
These dumps are effluent treatment
a common sight in I have learned to accept and enjoy chance that pay a heavy price. plant in Jajmau, Kanpur.
Jajmau in Kanpur. and accident as important elements in This knowledge drove me to channel my Even after the treatment,
Hexavalent chromium, the process of making this body of work. feelings of disillusionment with the city, to the water contains
a by-product of the Hexavalent Chromium, a
It’s important also to note the influence of create imagery that would possibly affect the
tanning process, is highly toxic carcinogen.
highly toxic and is known contemporary artists like Anselm Keifer on conversation about access to clean water and It acidifies the soil
to cause skin diseases, my way of thinking. The resulting body of air, and the need to minimise environmental and seeps into the
lung cancer, liver work is an amalgamation of documentary pollution which impacts these communities groundwater and finds
failure and premature  its way into the Ganges.
and artistic approach to river pollution—a the most. As a consequence, it highlighted (Cyanotype print
dementia. (Cyanotype 
print on paper, crisis with severe environmental, economic photography’s role in bringing these issues on paper,
29.7cm x 42cm, 2016). and health consequences in India. to the forefront.  29.7cm x 42cm, 2016).

the oceans. Every year, 1.2 billion pounds of
plastic is dumped into it, which combined
with other pollutants, affects more than
500 million people living in the Gangetic
basin. We are exposed to hundreds of
photographs of river and ocean pollution
Cyanotype print made
every day and have become desensitised to
with impressions of
78 these images.
chromium sludge at a
chromium recovery plant Process plays a crucial role in all my
in Jajmau, in Kanpur. bodies of work. It occurred to me that
(Cyanotype print
with Chromium making Cyanotype prints that interact
compounds on paper, both physically and chemically with
29.7cm x 42cm, 2016). pollutants is a new way of seeing and
representing this man-made environmental
crisis. While appearing to be poetic, the
medium allowed me to deliver some
brutal and disturbing facts. Such prints
are made by exposing the photosensitive
surface to sunlight or UV light. By placing
photo negatives or objects on the print
surface, images or photograms are made, 79
referencing the earliest days of the
photographic medium. The distinctive
Prussian blue colour of Cyanotype prints
has a metaphorical significance to rivers,
oceans, and their contamination.

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