Indians

My ongoing, mega-photography project

Hey friends,

Greetings from NCR, India!

Today, I can showcase the beginnings of a mega-photography project I have in the works. 

If you are familiar with my work, then you’ll know of Heroes in 100 Faces, a photo story where I shared 100 portraits taken across India. These were portraits taken of everyday people, with the goal being to acknowledge the commonperson in this country. 

The response this project got was far beyond what I imagined. It showed me the power of such a project to resonate with people. (Click here to see the full photo story)

Now, it has been a year since I published HIHF, and I’ve grown as a photographer. I’ve travelled to new places, met new people, and taken more (and better) portraits. And all the while, I’ve been thinking about how I could take this project to the next level. 

Finally, I landed on the dream of compiling portraits from every state in India. This country has such a diverse population, and there is no way a photo story could do it justice. So this project is simply to highlight this astonishing diversity. 

The ethos is the same: to showcase the beauty of the everyday Indian. I would be honoured if you checked it out. Click here to see it.

By my estimates, I’ve only done 10% of the work for this mega project. But that’s not a bad thing. I have a foundation upon which I can work. And I’m under no illusion that this project will end any time soon. 

The point is that I give myself this platform upon which I can build. In the coming years, I will be able to add to it until one day, when I’ll have enough material to, perhaps, make this into a full coffee table book.

If you have any suggestions for certain portraits that I should get (like the Kathakali performers of Kerala, for example), then please comment below or reply to this and tell me. These could be iconic Indian art forms that I should try to feature. 

Postcard

When I was going through my archive for Andhra Pradesh, I found a photograph of this lady. She looked very familiar, and I wondered whether I had seen her before.

Then it hit me that I had photographed her a year ago, when I had visited the fields surrounding the village. It was so surreal to realise that I had photographed the same person on two separate occasions. Here’s the older photo below.

Favourite Quote

And because I heard in church basements and on bungalow porches the same very same human values—honesty and hard work, and empathy—that had been drilled into me by my mother and grandparents, I came to trust the common thread that exists between people - Barack Obama, A Promised Land

Have a creative, wild and inspiring week!

If you’re new, welcome to The Owlet! My name is Ishan Shanavas, and I am an Artist, Photographer, Writer and Student of the Natural World.

Here I talk about my work, along with curating the most interesting ideas on the internet. I confine them to topics like Nature, Culture, Photography, and Art but often fall prey to other genres.

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