I’ll take you through this little
journey which I had and why I decided to
become a photographer it why I chose to
do what I’m doing this all began 1012
years back and these were times which
were difficult which was very difficult
why they were difficult and what they
were is another talk for some other day
but I remember quite well that all of a
sudden it became like a mad obsession
you know photography and living with
photographs looking at photographs and
suddenly I realized after a couple of
years that it was only photography that
I was doing there was nothing else I was
shifting colleges I was shifting cities
different houses trying to settle down
with life because it was very chaotic it
was important to calm down and when
people used to ask me that what do you
do I had no answer because I I was doing
nothing so photography at some level
give some sort of meaning you know some
sort of sense to everything
– this loveliness so I started saying
that I’m a photographer and people
started believing I could enter spaces
which I would otherwise wouldn’t have
entered and back in those days it was
very difficult to really do what you
wanted to do because in order to be a
photographer you had to be a
do weddings are there were different
various kinds of things that other
people were doing and I found them very
boring here
that’s not what I wanted to do there
were trouble in the family that what
this guy is going to do but they were
happy that I was doing something we had
to travel from one city to the other in
order to see a profit show because the
city never had these things so I
remember that there was this suffocation
it was it was really lonely to be a
photographer you couldn’t make people
understand what you are doing and
photography is such a medium where it
only interests photographers and that
was another concern that what am I going
to talk about as a photographer in a TED
talk because the normal people they
don’t really care about photography
which is absolutely fine but this is how
it is and that was one one thing time
when I was looking at work because
internet had just come not like this
generation when they had internet from
+56 we hadn’t internet at a sort of time
when we were giving class 10 11 12 or
something like that so we would suppose
to different kinds of photography so I
knew that
you know I mean I’m not getting anywhere
like four or five months of hard work is
not getting us anywhere
trial and error you do this for some
time and you do something else and then
I I mean I saw on to Angelica’s walk
French photographer who sort of changed
my whole idea of photography and just
before that I really love Sur Aguas work
from India
the only photographer I looked up to
back then and I still do now and I
always thought that you know like how
are they doing it exactly so I went for
this workshop in Angkor called I go for
a festival and I did this workshop with
Antoine it was very intense and I
remember shooting like mad you know
whatever I had kept within me for so
long like this last two three years of
frustration this was the work which I
had done in Cambodia called comedian and
it was around four five days of shooting
but what came as a by-product of this
mad shooting was I could do what I was
looking forward to you know I remember
when Antoine was giving this feedback
sessions at the end of these workshops
he would he would speak to me after he
had spoken to everyone and on the last
day when he was talking to everyone else
I was just crying you know so
photography then I realized was just not
a career or a passion or a hobby it was
like life and death and only few
photographers can understand this it’s
very difficult
then this beautiful photographer who was
there I mean she helped me make a book
and I knew that I had to do something
with the work and so I tried and I made
a book with this just made 200 little
copies it had this huge poster inside it
folded there was this envelope with a
little bit of prints inside there was a
text sheet and I was very excited about
it I didn’t wait for a publisher to look
at this work or I was not waiting for
anyone else it felt like doing something
and I did it and back in those days it
was not as easy to do a self-published
book or either in terms of designing it
or in terms of taking it out to people
etcetera etcetera so those were exciting
times and I’m in mind my journey into
the world of photography as it started
it had a lot to do with the and that was
one point in time when I was completely
obsessed with the Japanese provoke
generation photographers like Dada Maria
marques Oh Kitajima there’s an army of
photographers and I kept on thinking
that you know like I want to make works
like this and after I finished this work
I got very bored again and this this is
what has happened to me all the time
that I do something with a lot of
obsession and then that obsession is
lifted and then I want to do something
else and but one thing you know which
happened in Angkor was it gives me some
sort of an idea of what kind of a
photographer I wanted to be you know
what kind of work I wanted to engage
with what kind of people I wanted to
work with and back then
which still holds in Calcutta you know
and the rest of the country is we don’t
have galleries we don’t have museums we
don’t have photo book publishers we
don’t have curators there is no there’s
no secondary market there’s nothing as
far as photography is concerned and I’ll
go back to the same thing that you have
to either be a photojournalist or a
commercial photographer or a fashion
photographer and things like that so it
was difficult for us but as I said that
more than a career more than anything
else my only reason to come to
photography was because I wanted to do
this and I wanted to spend my whole life
and photography is what I thought back
then I don’t know what I think maybe
after Angkor after meeting all these
great photographers I wanted to meet a
lot of these things change and I figured
that everybody is on the same journey
everybody has similar kind of problems
so this is this was the book came in
this little slip case sort of cover with
a tech sheet and other things so I know
it’s not a great book I know where this
book is wrong etc but this is very
special
maybe you know it will I will do
something with it after many years maybe
of 10 years or something but a lot of
mistakes and like photography like keep
like doing your own shows using public
space everything this book also taught
me how to make a book so our whole like
my entire generation like the generation
I belong to
all of us have learned through this
trial and ever because we never had
colleges we never had schools we never
had people to tell us that what is good
what is bad what you should do what you
searching for something all along and
that’s the reason that many of us all
our works are different and we still are
people who probably are not so obsessed
with the arrival which I keep on telling
people that photography in general is
for me is more about the journey when
someone is too obsessed with the arrival
then there’s nothing from the journey
that you can extract and whatever there
is is what you have
so after Angkor after commit then we
then I went to this black hole again of
not understanding anything and I was in
this weird spot all over again what
should I do now I had after that I had
people closest I remember and I was in
the hospital and somehow there was this
gallery delhi where i had an exhibition
and i had met this ambassador from
poland who was there she really liked
the kind of work I was doing so she told
me back then that you know are you
interested to go to Poland for this
little artist residency that they are
doing so I said yes but why bring up the
hospital and all that is that I was
lying in my bed and this woman had sent
me it’s very kind of her to send me this
music like DVDs of Thomas Danko and I
was listening to
and did something to it so I mean
inspired by philosophy and his seminal
work three colours trilogy and some
stories that I heard from people from my
generation my friends etc who grew up
listening to soviet-era short stories I
did this work in Poland in the winter of
2013 and can you just run the thing so
this is me making some sense of color
work for the first time and how I was as
I said both with black and white
photography and you know Poland for me
was about the Solidarity movement and
how the communist regime was thrown over
by a very legitimate People’s Movement
and this is something which was also
happening here just happened here like
the so called leftist forces in big ball
were thrown out after a long time
so it was easy for me to bridge this you
know this romantic idea of the winter in
Poland etc etc and we in Calcutta we
were a by-product of the generation
we’ll just seen on the ground Xingu
happening
the Japanese government the so-called
communist government you’re killing
people in on the ground and whatever
happened after that we always witness
that so my idea was to look at the color
red and how it changed you know from the
symbol of the Solidarity movement etc to
what it is now because capitalism has
taken over in
to start the other then I came back
again and I went to Korea in this coal
mines where I was fixing for these two
French filmmakers tf1 National Park and
draw the Braille you can keep it going
so Jana and Java making this film in
Korea on the fire there was an
underground fire which was burning took
a very very long time and I was just
shooting on my phone and slowly steadily
I realized that I might have something
and later like last year Getty and
Instagram have been very kind to offer
me a grant for this work and this is the
time when mobile phones and phone
cameras and phone images were getting
popular and people were using it like
never before
so things for getting more easy you know
the bridge that was there when I when I
had started photography that you have to
depend on a magazine or a printed
newspaper or a gallery etc these were
vanishing and we could do it with the
social media with Instagram this that
the other and there is another very
significant thing which I understood
from doing this work was the power of
the mobile phones what it would do if
you take into consideration the entire
history of photography the conceptual
photography or the post photography that
we talked about is completely dependent
on the idea that we are just making old
images and we can’t make new images but
the phone for the first time in this is
like 200 years can give you something
very radical so from me mobile phone
photography there is nothing for mobile
for photography anyways I mean if you
make images with a mobile maybe there is
a very slight chance that you can get
something which you do not know so and I
keep telling this that if you give a
phone to a Picasso with 16 17 year-old
boy or a girl you would know what a
mobile phone can do so all of us know
like about the world in Georgia there is
no much to talk about
I mean you know like two three minutes
is such a little time to talk about but
yeah it’s very surreal I mean there’s a
underground fire which has been burning
in Georgia for a very very long time and
nobody has been able to stop it and
nobody wants to stop it also because all
institutions agencies the government
everyone has failed you know from from
the maharaja who is controlling the fire
he failed and then the british raj they
feel when they took control then the
government of india failed then the
multinational companies are also going
to fail the labor the trade union
movements there it failed
the Mafia failed so this is a story of
failure of yours and yours so this has
been going on since centuries so what I
wanted to do is I wanted to make a sense
of this sort of post-apocalyptic kind of
world where I wanted to see how the
world looks like when you have extracted
everything from it you know so is what
it is and hopefully there will be a book
on the Jharia work very soon supposed to
happen end of next month etc might get a
little push so and now as I said that
you know I keep moving and you know I
get very bored doing the same thing over
and over again so yeah so I just want to
run you through some little work that I
had done which is like very close to me
it’s with no beginning and no end there
is a lot of pressure photographers too
there’s a lot of pressure for us to sort
of do work you know like to
what is the work I didn’t come to
photography to make a career in
photography so more than building up
bodies of work and creating I don’t know
what for me these images make lot of
sense to me because whatever I can’t say
loudly to people is something I’d rather
hide it in images you know these are
images these are like very precious
moments in my life and these are little
secrets
and I have always been more interested
in mystery than truth I have been more
interested in the journey more than the
destination of being more interested in
making relationships which are more sort
of honest and open rather than making
this is my only way out I mean there’s
no other way I can live it’s very
difficult to make sense of what I’m
saying and that’s the reason I have
chosen photography to do it so coming
back to Instagram again I mean you know
these little places give us this Avenue
to keep doing what you want and not
really care about the market or the
history of photography or how to make a
career out of so on and so forth this
travel will definitely go on but at the
same time most more than anything else
is very important to be happy it’s very
important to make sense of who you are
maybe Who I am and it’s thanks a lot
[Music] [Applause]