The inaugural session of the Indian Photography Festival saw two legends from the world of photography: Raghu Rai and Sebastiao Salgado coming together for a discussion on the state the art finds itself, political persecution and creating legacies among other things… A transcript of some excerpts:

Raghu Rai: We must tell our listeners that we have lost a great photographer and a friend of ours, Bruno Barbey. Salgado and I have spent some great times with Bruno.

Raghu Rai: Sebastiao, we both are in our 70’s and the eternal truth is that we both have to vacate the planet sometime or the other, for other people to take over. Your work in your homeland in Brazil where you have brought 1700 acres of land to life and so much is happening with the people of Brazil and this is something very rare for a photographer to be engaged with. I remember last year during the awards ceremony in Brazil you were asking me about my farm and the plants I have been planting. Now, I have seen the details and it’s such an amazing and sensitive work you have done, to inherit a land which is barren and dry, and create the magic of the greens, the breeze and the atmosphere. Playing with your trees was so wonderful to watch; and that also describes the spirit of Sebastiao Salgado. I must tell everybody that there are very few gentleman photographers who are sensitive, caring and not having big airs about themselves and he is one of them and a very rare human being. It is a delight to be friends with him. Plus, the huge body of work he has done on workers, refugees. He chooses amazing situations and he explores the world where nobody else has gone. ‘Genesis’ which is your latest work of 8 years. You told me something very beautiful when I told you that I cannot stay away from home for more than 5-7 days and I asked you how do you manage to stay away from
home for so long? He said something very beautiful which is etched in my mind. You said, ‘Raghu, wherever I go, I carry my home inside me’. That is a very special quality. Now that you have covered a variety of subject matters from news stories, drought and famine in Africa, workers and refugees. You are moving from one major project to another, what is it that drives you so intensely?

Sebastiao Salgado: I come from a young country. You are born in a very old cultural country, that is India. My country is just 500 years old. The population here is a mixture of population from all over the world. We have native population here, the Brazilian indegenious people but a part of my family came from the greater part of Switzerland and another part of my family came from Spain. You see, the world was very close to me. Africa is close to us, Brazil is at the side of the Atlantic ocean. I remember when I came out of the farm of my parents, I came to Victoria which is a seaside town where my wife Leila was born. We had a very big harbour there from where we exported iron ore all over the world. I saw these ships coming to collect the iron ore; iron ore going to Japan, United States, Norway. I had to explore the planet to see where my origins were coming from. I have seven sisters, I am the only boy in my family. Brazil is a huge country, almost three times the size of India. My sisters were married and I was young, my father sent me alone to visit them which was a 2-3 day trip from our home. When I was quite young, Leila and I were fighting against dictatorship in Brazil. You either stayed and fought the Government or you left Brazil. We were too young to go fight so the organisation that we were a part of took a decision and told us to leave Brazil so we left. We came to France. I did my PhD and Leila became an architect. When I came to France, I knew the place like the back of my hand because I had read so many things about France. When I came to India for the first time and stayed at your home, then I came again with my son. It became my home. You see, every part of the planet that I went to became my home. My country is everywhere. I came from a young culture so for me, it was important to understand what was going on in my mind, what was my ideology, what was my political message, things that made me happy or very upset and the ideas that were important for me. I have worked on very few stories, Raghu. When I came to India for the first time and stayed with you, I was working on a book about workers, workers for me was one story but it took me six years to complete it. I worked in 30 different countries across the world to build this story. I came once to India to do a story about Polio, I was a Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF then. When I saw the map of India, few years before coming, the red points that indicated the number of polio cases, the map was as red as the shirt you are wearing today, more than three hundred thousand cases. I was coming to photograph five years later and there were just 7 cases of Polio. That was such a beautiful story to do. That story took my heart, to photograph the end of polio in India. It is the story that is driving me. For me, we are a moment in photography, Raghu, you with your work in India and me traveling all over but we are close, not too different. We are deeply motivated to be a part of this moment, this historical moment that we are leaving. I just finished seven years of work in Amazonia which is very important to me. I have a book coming out in April about Amazonia, you see, that is part of my historical moment. This approach to our photography gave to us; to you, to me and Bruno Barbey and many other photographers that we are completely tied to the historical moment that we live.

Raghu Rai: You mentioned that you stayed with me in India and I think I must share with the audience about how you stayed with me because that is the most beautiful story. I was working with India Today and also shooting for Magnum off and on and I got a call from Sebastio that he is coming to India and would like to meet me. I got delayed at the office and when I came home Sebastio was sitting in the drawing. He gets up and greets me. We are meeting for the first time and he says that the energy in your home is so positive and so beautiful, why can’t I stay here? I said why not! I have cherished these moments forever.

Few weeks ago you were in conversation with Shahidul Alam, he is a photographer and more of an activist. When we add a political line to our photographs then it changes its shades, right? When he got arrested by his Government, and at one time they had honored me as a friend of Bangladesh when I was photographing the refugees and the war so I was honored by the Prime Minister. I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister saying that Shahidul is a person who loves his country and he is very concerned and it doesn’t feel good that he should be put through such difficulties. When he was released, he invited me to their festival and there I said that as a photographer it is my right to get involved in any situation that concerns my country and people as a whole and I will like to capture the truth as it gets revealed there and then. But I will not add another line which creates an explosive political statement. What do you think of that?

Sebastiao Salgado: All humans are political animals. Each person has their history. Personally, I am not a part of any political party. I am now fighting with the indigenous movements in Brazil to protect the forests and the indian communities. We have a horrible President but I am not fighting politically. I have other Brazilian photographer friends who are political photographers, they have their reason to do. I cannot judge. What matters is that all our work together, we are a kind of mirror of the society that we are part of. The society sees itself by our photography, all together.

Raghu Rai: I feel your photograph is as good as it can speak for itself, just through the image. Now, there is conceptual and all kind of fine art photography happening, we are nobody to stop it but the purity and instinctive response to any given situation has another kind of discovery that takes you deeper into depths without needing to have any words around it and I see that in your photography. Your photos don’t need words. Our thinking has been different…

Sebastiao Salgado: For me, there is photography and something that is not, which is classical art. When you capture a mountain, part is you that captures and part is your instinct and part is the people who integrate you inside of that moment. Photography has become a big business. There is no instinct and emotion in those pictures, no integration of the mind and the moment and that is the big difference, Raghu. There is a new fashion in photography, it is a business, you see people buying photographs for tens and thousands of dollars.

Raghu Rai: Everything comes from somewhere, I am not a follower of any photographer’s style because styles come and disappear, and trendy photography is the worst thing that is happening to photography and many young photographers are being dragged into it like the fast food attitude that they have. All the photography greats before us, if they hadn’t set the milestones for us, we wouldn’t be taking off to another level of fulfillment and richness and creativity so that the journey of this medium gets enriched and more powerful. Sometimes I wish I could photograph India and not think of my picture that captures the spirit of everything that India represents and here there are these colourless, bland, emotionless photographs exhibiting and being bought and sold. This is where we senior photographers need to discuss it a little more because this is not something….I feel your heart should become your sensor, it should receive as it is and you reflect with your intuitive response. Conceptual photography happens in this little mind space and the world out there is so large but they are so happy and impressed, and the gallerists are ready for that kind of nonsense.

Sebastiao Salgado: This is how the world works, these things come and go. What is amazing for me is that when I go to buy photos, the pictures which are more reserved for them are the ones of Cartez, Raghu Rai; of photographers who put their heart inside their photography. Art must be a reference. One day we tell the history of your country and it goes to the museums of India, the next generation will be seeing your pictures as the history of India, they become art because they are the property of humanity and they tell the story of the moment that we lived. If we produce nothing, we disappear. Real art work is the history that you tell and not you individually. I went for a show in Barcelona, my friends took me to see African art and we were seeing the instruments used to transport water, they were objects but it was so well done. They become the reference of their country and that I believe is the most important.

Raghu Rai: The purpose of photography is to capture the time we live in because that is going to be the visual history of tomorrow. When photography started, the influence of painting was so heavy on photography. Studio photography made people sit against a backdrop and pose and this was all acquired from the tradition of painting. Centuries of tradition and experience, we started copying them and then from there people like Andre Curtis took things in different directions. The problem with today’s generation is that even if they make money out of photography, they want to call themselves photographers. Fine, they can call themselves whatever they like but the method they choose and the journey they take on is so controlled by their little mindspace. They want to look different. Short term gains, fast food generation in a hurry for gratification, these are the questions that need to be discussed. The tradition of photography has changed so much. There is no time for revelation in today’s world.

Sebastiao Salgado: At the end of the day, the photographs that become reference are not fashion photographs. Photography is a way of life. You don’t do photography because you are a journalist or an activist. You cannot do a story if it is not your story, if you impose yourself on a story then you cannot do it, you must be coherent with your ideas, with your ideology and concerned with your ethics.

Raghu Rai: When you listen to your psyche and respond to intuition, it may not give you instant gratification but it certainly begins to take you into the depth of things, of nature. In today’s world people don’t have the patience to invest the time and energy, that’s where the flaw also lies.

Audience Question: Should a photographer document an unfair/ unethical moment when he/she realizes it is unfair while capturing it?

Sebastiao Salgado: Ethical is not one concept. What is ethical is a personal judgement. There are so many times I put my camera in place to photograph, I sit and I cry, I cry in front of situations that are so hard and sometimes I have to photograph it because it’s important to show it to every person on the planet. There was so much death in Africa. On some days, I saw 15,000 people die. I saw so many dramatic things and I was alone, nobody to tell me so I had to take a decision: to do or not to do? To be or not to be? You must be there to see if you can or cannot do.

Raghu Rai: If I am in a situation and somebody is dying and I am the only one that can save him then I think it is my responsibility to do that. If there are people around then I am sorry, I am not a social worker. We should not indulge in thinking and losing a great moment in history to share with the rest of the world.

Srishti Mehra

Srishti is a former broadcast journalist who is currently finding her feet in the development sector. Having completed the Teach For India fellowship earlier this year, she intends to continue working in the development sector with a strong inclination towards Gender and Education, Government Relations and Public Policy. She is passionate about good governance and utilizing media for citizen welfare.