“If a picture is good, it tells many different stories”, says the renowned Czech-French photographer Josef Koudelka. Samyak Drishti is a humble and sincere attempt to do precisely the same. We are a team of journalists, artists and storytellers striving to tell stories of the marginalized classes which need a voice, face and an audience. It’s a platform to promote documentary photography that would inspire and enable positive change by creating a plural space for those who speak best through their art.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has tested our resolve by throwing our ordinary lives off balance, it hasn’t dampened our spirits to bring out this first issue of Samyak Drishti to you all. We are delighted to have been able to launch this issue despite the technical and geographical constraints in these uncertain times.
It would not have been possible without the collective effort of our friends and colleagues who very kindly agreed to contribute their ideas, articles, photos and, most importantly, their valuable time in the making of this e-magazine. A warm-hearted thank you all of them.
We hope that you enjoy reading this issue and keep visiting us for the upcoming ones.
Happy reading and stay safe!
Conversation
Interview of Shahidul Alam by Shraddha Ghatge
Alam won the Times Person of the Year (2018) and more recently, the 2020 International Press Freedom Award. Coincidentally, Samyak Drishti spoke to him on the same day (August 5), when he was arrested couple of years ago. With an occasional sprinkling of warm-hearted anecdotes and honest answers, Alam spoke about his journey, arrest, Drik Photo library, and the soulful art of photography.
Palanikumar, one of the cinematographers of Kakkoos (meaning “toilet” in Tamil; it’s a documentary on manual scavengers in Tamil Nadu by filmmaker Divya Bharathi), talks to Samyak Drishti about his journey from getting his photos displayed in various exhibitions, armouring children of manual scavengers with cameras, teaching them photography, hosting exhibitions for them, and winning awards.
This is how Kochi based artist Upendranath describes his works- as an outcome of questioning the current world order and his rebellion against the mainstream.
The boy from the little island-village of Moipith on the Sunderbans Islands in West Bengal now teaches in a primary school in Kolkata and spends his spare time on gathering and gauging lenses, finding fixtures in hardware shops and fixing eye on the city’s streets and flea markets, finding function for the fungus, and gazing the sky in search of an infinite uncloven space…
My intent is to stoke your interest in studying this movie through a filmmaker’s lens. I would take time to dwell upon certain contradictions between the cinema image and photography, how both can help and even disturb each other.
Photo visuality of unfolding ‘PANDEMIC’ by Prof. Y. S. Alone
This pandemic is similar to that of a holocaust. Photo images are the repository of unfolding the danger of extinction, secondary citizenship, police state, and many uncontrolled natures of Indians.
A 20-metre long blind alley in the busiest part of south Kolkata is the home-cum-world for about a dozen of stray dogs. The ‘family’ has been living there for a number of canine-generations.
Work from home, Zoom meetings, learning new recipes over the weekends, handling work pressure in front of family, showing composure and patience with the children around and frequent coffee breaks from work, have now become the new normal.
