Life in the storm

The struggle of the will and body against the sea, fueled by the determination not to go hungry the next day. Step by each agonizing step, steadying the nets and plowing through the waves as the sea recedes. This is the everyday life of the five thousand families on the coast in Kuakata who makes their living by catching wild post-larvae (PL) for the local prawn industry. The meager income they earn is below the US$ 2.5. But this is not their only concern. Hammered constantly by storms and devastated by two massive cyclones Sidr (2007) and Aila (2009) the coast has lost much of its natural resources. This set of pictures is my attempt to portray the relationship of these individuals with the net and how it is integral and divine for the continuity of their lives they lead in the storm –both real and perceptual.

Broken

The Larva Collector against the sea

Life in the storm

Caged

Bauhaus- redefining the art of photography

The Bauhaus has evolved into an inspiring idea for creativity and art from its humble beginning as an academic institute. It was a school in Germany with the vision of integrating art and industry by combining fine arts with crafts. Although the school did not continue physically, the school of thought did and the idea of Bauhaus lives on. The school was established in three German cities in different time periods: in Weimar from 1919 to 1925, in Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and finally in Berlin from 1932 to 1933. The Nazi government claimed that it was a centre of communist propaganda spreading communist intellectualism. The ruthless pressure from the Nazi regime resulted in the closure of the school. However, the closing could not deter the growth of the idea central to Bauhaus. The staff continued to spread its concepts and ideas as they left Germany and emigrated all over the world.

Photogram by László Moholy-Nagy

Bauhaus has its influence in the art of Photography as well. It is quite evident in camera-less photography. The concept and technique of camera-less photography is as old as photography itself. For example, in 1834, Wiliam Henry Fox Talbot produced images without camera that he called “photogenic drawings”. However, the years following World War I saw intensive avant-garde experimentation with the form of camera-less photography. In 1919, the German artist Christian Schad made a series of “Schadographs”. Man Ray, an American photographer working in Paris, produced the first “Rayograms” in 1921. There are many experimentations from the Bauhaus school of thought in this as well. One of the prominent ones are the work of Moholy-Nagy's first photograms at Bauhaus from 1922.  He developed his art by placing easily identifiable object directly on print-out paper in direct sunlight. His work reveals an interest not only in what he described as “spatial rhythm & equilibrium of form” but also especially in the problems of spatial relationships among pictorial elements in a non-perspectival field.

 Photogram by László Moholy-Nagy

The focus of Moholy’s work was on the exploration of new artistic media. It was trying to get “art's conception of itself” in line “with the media of mechanical reproduction” and, by doing so, provide a new acceptable place for art in an advanced industrial society. The course he taught in Bauhaus as well as his work stimulated his students to engage in their own experiments. They were deeply concerned with contemporary problems on space relation and actively engaged on the new artistic possibilities through photography: i.e. bird's eye and worms eye view, negative effect, double exposure and double printing, micro photography and enlargements. Therefore photography was considered an end itself for artistic endeavor but it was also put to practical use, for example, design and layout in advertising, posters and typography.

Thus, Photography at the Bauhaus contributed to the development of photographic experimentation and its acceptance as a suitable aesthetic medium for the modern society. It also played an integral part in the formation of a new mass culture.

Truth and Photography

The intent and impact of photography is getting more important with time, it is not only newspaper now. The mass communication is depending on images today like never before. Photography is a very summarized and yet effective information providing media. Then again it depends on the quality and contents. There were times when people became numb to the numbers of sufferers they used to read very often in the newspaper. Then they begin to feel the agony through photographs. One thousand dead people in a photograph is much more stronger than 'one thousand dead' as a number written on a paper. Or perhaps a heartbreaking scene is more striking than a thousands' dead scene. But people now is becoming habituated to these as well, contents are competing with the quantity. We are watching thousands of distressing images from all over the world through television, internet on computers, telephone and so on. It is making us insensible to the subject’s effectiveness.

There were times when paintings were commissioned by churches and monarchy for public relation. Today there is photography. Not only staged commercial pictures, even the documentary photographs are also getting used for providing a particular impression. Camera is a machine, documents the true information it is given to, but the purpose and perspective of a photographer and sometimes the context and the way of presentation make the photograph a fake or perhaps a lie. 

Now the purpose can be as positive as boosting patriotism of a nation by staging a victory scene or rising antiwar impression by showing the cruelty or tragedy in war. Sometimes creating a propaganda can also be the objective of a photograph. For example photograph of four missiles fired by Iran ratcheted up the tensions between the Islamic state and the US and Israel. Where some photographs find it's own way to justice like the photos of Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse.

What is the truth? Does it depends on time and context? Is it variable to people and places? Is it what people wants to consider or something what they are offered without any other option? In case of photography, the truth is a concept always biased by what the photographer sees, believes or want others to believe. We can question the responsibility of a photographer or perhaps the responsibilities confront us all. That is why questions arise about humanity and duty when a subway passenger stays busy photographing a person who fell into the line just in front of him. There were also incidents where the photographers cannot bear their role they played in the brutality, even a great cause cannot overcome that pain. So we find examples where a war photographer says she feels guilty that she gets protected and stays alive after every tragedy; eventually she ends up dying on the battlefield. Or a photographer, who documents the food crisis of an African nation by letting a vulture kill a striving child and ends up by killing himself out of despair and regret.

So what matters most, the subject setting facts of a photographs or the purpose of the photographer at the time it was taken or the intention of it's use?

I believe truth in photography is getting pressurized with viewer's expectation and eventually effecting the photograph’s purpose. We are in obsession of recording everything. We miss to experience a significant scene by our eyes and feeling and stays busy with the camera's display as sharing everything is the trend now. The obsession reminds me of Panopticon prison where a circular structure with an “inspection house” at its centre was used to watch the prisoners. Our drive to stay in network made us prisoners by our choice.