Travelling and Photographing People

Reflections from thousands of encounters

Hey friends,

Greetings from Ashoka University, India!

There are multiple dimensions to my work, one of them being people photography. In the past few weeks, I’ve travelled across four states, listening to people’s stories and taking their portraits.

Now, back at university, I reflect on these travels and what they’ve taught me.

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Travelling and Photographing People

Taking portraits isn’t just about asking them for consent. There is a whole host of factors that come into play. You need to read the situation.

In Rajasthan, I learnt that the locals give preferential treatment to tourists and foreigners than to other locals. I don’t know what this says about them, but this affected how I approached people to shoot them. I asked them for consent in English rather than Hindi because that showed I wasn’t from there. In this way, I got more people to agree to be photographed.

Sometimes, people just want to have a chat. We live in an era where everyone is absorbed in their own worlds. Often, if you want to photograph people, strike up a conversation. They tell you their stories, and you leave learning just a little about someone’s life.

Having travelled across India photographing people, I’ve had many “side” experiences. I’ve been threatened to be arrested, physically attacked, invited into a prostitution racket and vomited on. I’ve eaten meals with soldiers, hitchhiked with strangers and heard their stories. I’ve had to buy a million cups of chai, cigarettes, and tobacco packets in return for photographs. My journals are bursting with all these stories.

I strongly believe that these small encounters, these tiny conversations and moments, have a long-lasting impact on one’s psyche. You grow as a person by meeting new people and seeing new places. At some point, I would love to travel across the whole country and photograph people from every state. Oh, how wonderful that would be!

The biggest lesson I’ve learnt is that beauty exists everywhere. It exists in the 80-year-old woman selling cucumbers on the street, in the 8-year-old boy who is being made to beg by his parents, the middle-aged man selling sweets for a living, and the bougie tourist who travels the world, shelling money like it means nothing. I’ve photographed all these people and will continue to do so in the hope that we can create a world that acknowledges multiple kinds of beauty.

Here are some links I enjoyed this week:

• Heroes in a 100 Faces: This was a project I did, where I compiled 100 portraits from across India, celebrating the maxim I talked about above—that beauty is omnipresent. This was a monumental effort, but I loved every bit of it.

• The Atlas of Beauty: My project was inspired by Mihaela Noroc, and her work with The Atlas of Beauty. She travelled across the world to photograph its women. This book (and larger online collection) celebrates the female beauty of our planet, and saying that it is one of the best works I’ve seen is an understatement. We need more people like Mihaela Noroc.

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Postcard

Since we’re talking about storytelling, I need to relate it back to wildlife photography. A good photograph always tells a story. Look at this picture. What does it tell you?

Favourite Quote

“Most events in life can be categorised in one of two ways: a good time, or a good story."- From Long Story Short by Margot Leitman.

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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