LIFE FROM BELOW. KOLKATA
SEARCHING FOR VALUE. KOLKATA
SORT. KOLKATA
DUST WEAPING. KOLKATA
ADJUSTED. KOLKATA
SIMPLY INGNORED. KOLKATA
DAILY LIFE. KOLKATA
VALUABLE. KOLKATALIFE FROM BELOW. KOLKATASEARCHING FOR VALUE. KOLKATASORT. KOLKATADUST WEAPING. KOLKATAADJUSTED. KOLKATASIMPLY INGNORED. KOLKATADAILY LIFE. KOLKATAVALUABLE. KOLKATAKolkata, North India
8 photographs
By the time I arrived in Kolkata, photography had become second nature. I no longer thought about where to stand, how to approach people, or whether I looked out of place. The camera had become an extension of the way I experienced the world.
Instead of searching for photographs, I simply photographed what was.
To tell a story honestly, I often found myself leaving my own comfort zone. I knelt on the ground, lay in the dust, waited for the right moment, and sometimes became part of the scene myself. On one occasion, someone kicked me because they didn’t want these moments to be seen by the outside world.
That experience taught me something unexpected. Society often accepts photographs of poverty as long as they are taken from a comfortable distance. But the moment you fully immerse yourself in that reality, seeing the world from the same level as the people living it, you begin to challenge more than just the viewer. You challenge the invisible distance we so often place between ourselves and others.
These photographs are not about misery. They are about dignity, resilience, and humanity and respct. They are an attempt to witness life honestly, without looking away or just point quite fingers.
I was often drawn to photographing people living in difficult circumstances. At times I questioned my own motives, wondering whether I was simply fascinated by hardship or lives so different from my own. More than anything, I struggled with the feeling that I was using someone else’s reality to create my own photographs. It took me years to realise that this question had no simple answer, and that perhaps it never should. Over time, however, I realised that what interested me was never poverty itself, but the honesty of these encounters.
Many of the people I met faced challenges far greater than my own, yet there was often a sincerity that left little room for pretence. I was never interested in photographing people because of their circumstances, but because of who they were: their dignity, resilience, humour, contradictions, and humanity. I wanted my photographs to reflect the respect and attention every person deserves.
These photographs are not about documenting poverty. They are about recognising people who are too often overlooked and inviting others to see them not as statistics or stereotypes, but simply as human beings. In the end, the image often became less important than the memory of the person standing in front of my camera.