"If your pictures aren't good enough,
you aren't close enough."
Robert Capa
Spread over three hundred pages, Subrata Ghosh's Dekha Sakshat (2025) manifests a nonpareil instance of folk practices diluting into the individual identity of their practitioners to rejuvenate together.
Accompanying the author, I have photographed artists and artisans who went the extra mile to embrace their creative pursuits, defying the chronic clutch of poverty and denial.
This body of work celebrates the eternal nexus between a creator and her creations, a practitioner and his practices.
The pastoralists of India's Rarh region are unprecedented because of their shared livelihood as an agriculturalist and a pastoralist.
Surprisingly, while the abled males migrate to the pasture, their families lead a settled domestic life. For centuries, they are playing a pivotal role in the ecosystem of the landmass, to maintain the fertility of the land.
This project, set on the backdrop of the region's rustic landscape, is a testimony to the prehistoric phenomenon of nomadic homo sapiens' gradual settlement into hamlets.
Baba, my father, was diagnosed with epilepsy when he was 6 years old.
At the time I was two, the school where he worked shut down forever. His health collapsed. An episode of hospitals and heartbreaks followed.
As days passed, Baba recovered, relapsed and recovered again. But my childhood slipped away, leaving a deep scar of turbulent memories within. Every daybreak, I kept rushing to his bedside to make sure he is alive.
In Feeling Like a Fireball, I am revisiting that episode of life to chronicle the feelings that my younger self could not speak of to anyone.
In my early school days, an essay writing question used to appear often in the annual tests. It read, “Write a paragraph about your village in your own words.”
We wrote, “The name of my village is Barah. In my village, there are two primary schools, one high school, one public library, and a health centre.” That way, the answers were elaborated with inchoate details and repetitions until the provided space on the answer sheets was filled.
But as grew up, I realised my village is more than that essay task; it is a breathing entity, an evolving relationship. This is my tribute to the people and space that shaped my identity.