One of the first things that strikes me about Mahesh Shantaram’s The African Portraits is his use of colour. Not just that the images are shot in colour as opposed to black and white, but also the way in which colour as a technique has been explored. What could have easily been garish is made strikingly stylish, almost sensual at times, through masterful control of light, both available and added. It’s all the more exciting to see this approach as it is in sync with the issue that it addresses: the colour of skin.
Through a different lens
For Shantaram’s subjects, who in a foreign land like ours, face a complete loss of identity by being judged purely on the basis of their external appearance or the colour of their skin, his wide-framed narrative portraits come as a tribute to their individualities. By choosing to make a portrait, the sole focus of the image is directly upon the subject and the environment that they have been photographed in. This treatment is a far cry from the common racist responses and reactions that the African community are otherwise subjected to by most Indians.
“We are interested in them only when there’s an incident,” says Shantaram over the phone from Bengaluru, where he is based. This is a fact that holds true for most of us, who are quite unaware of the large African community, mainly students, based in our cities. Though, it was in fact ‘an incident’ — the attack on the 21-year-old Tanzanian woman by a mob in Hesaraghatta, Bengaluru, earlier this year after a Sudanese youth ran over a local — that led Shantaram to start on the project.
“As an artiste, this is my response. Like a writer would write, a film-maker would make a film,” says Shantaram. Disturbed by this episode, he quickly got in touch with a journalist friend who helped him with a few contacts that set the ball rolling. In a few months, he managed to tap into communities from Bengaluru, Jaipur, Delhi and Manipal. Though he’ll tell you how much there is still left to cover: from the “footballers of Calcutta and Shillong” to the “druglords of Goa”.
Documenting diversity
Natoya, Jamaica / Manipal. Photo: Mahesh Shantaram. Courtesy: Tasveer
Even though several of his subjects, even after hours of conversation, have not necessarily yielded to being photographed, Shantaram makes it a point to troop into meetings with his camera, “an extension of his body”, as he calls it, luck or chance notwithstanding. Access to women especially, as he recalls, has turned out be far more difficult. One needs a deeper understanding of cultural and social mores within communities or sub-communities to work your way through projects like this one.
For most Indians who put all similar looking people from a broader region under one umbrella: like ‘Chinese’ for anyone from Manipur to Manila or ‘Madrasi’ for anyone from anywhere in south India, the diversity that exists within the African community remains entirely elusive. The incident of the Tanzanian woman is a prime example of just that, where the man at fault was from Sudan and had no connection to her other than being ‘African’ by race, but whom the ignorant mob, blind with rage still assaulted.
Wandoh, Chad / Bangalore. Photo: Mahesh Shantaram. Courtesy: Tasveer
Shantaram says her actually being Sudanese wouldn’t have justified the brutality either, so that cannot really be a point of defence, but only remains a factual irony. No one, regardless of nationality or gender, deserves to be a victim of such heartless barbarity based on superficiality.
Through up-close and personal documentation, Shantaram is in the process of slowly peeling off the layers to understand the subtler intricacies and issues that the African community faces individually as well as collectively. A “sum of humanity in a uniquely Indian experience” is what the photographer best describes it as. While in his first portraits the attention was more on the technical and social factors, his more recent work, some of which is not a part of this exhibition, is more densely layered.
He has begun recreating and directing situations from his subject’s own life experiences, which they re-enact. This helps him know a lot more about their histories, their current lifestyle, their choices and the reasons behind a lot of their decisions. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know what aspirations push someone from Africa to pursue higher studies here in India?
Making a portrait
Misana, Tanzania / Bangalore. Photo: Mahesh Shantaram. Courtesy: Tasveer
Shooting them in their own space, in and around their homes, opens up another window into their lives. “Everything from the choice of furniture, upholstery, what kind of walls… bedsheets they use, everything tells a story,” he says. To him, the home becomes a stage where the story unfurls in a created, controlled environment.
Shantaram has from the beginning been very clear about making images that will visually thrill the viewer. “If I am making a portrait, let people enjoy,” he says. He wants to make them question who these people are and what stories they are made of. Just as it is important to make impactful images, it is also imperative that their voices be heard, here in the form of accompanying text to the photographs.
All portraits have been shot at night at really long exposures, sometimes going up to 15 long seconds. He feels grateful to his subjects for patiently staying still for that long and acknowledges the strange relationship of mutual dependency and trust that is created between the two. He ends up being the more dependent one in this collaborative exercise, where the subjects control the shoot.
Shantaram’s process also brings with it a certain stillness that is almost palpable in the images through the series. Almost cinematic in feel, the saturated colours are a mix of available light and a bit of external torchlight.
Though the end product is fascinating, shooting is mostly a struggle, as in the darkness of the night, he is often unable to see where and how his subjects are placed. For a portrait photographer who needs to sense body language, expression and framing among other things, this can be quite a gamble.
What we see as viewers are multi-hued dramatic images where every detail, shadow and highlight is picked up and presented not as reality would have it, but as the photographer visualised it.
Connecting communities
Prosper, Tanzania / Bangalore. Photo: Mahesh Shantaram. Courtesy: Tasveer
Shantaram also believes that showcasing the series publicly is really a chance for people to come together, connect and interact in the safe cocoon of a gallery space. For the Africans specifically, who most often “find themselves as non-entities in all kinds of vulnerable situations, due to lack of agency”, that is no support system of any kind, this is a great way of feeling accepted or at least creating some sort of a network to fall back on.
He reveals how, for several African students who inevitably end up living in some far corner of the city, “a car becomes a very important element of their freedom”. But even buying a car, becomes a challenge, where often they are cheated with older cars being sold as new.
In exposing these vulnerabilities or the emotional and mental trauma that they face, Shantaram’s work holds a mirror not just to the subjects but to the perpetrators for their thoughtless actions and our societal psyche in general. On the other hand, in traversing the multi-faceted cultural traits of specific regions within Africa, like religion or sexuality, the work also “becomes a reflection of who you are”. What makes stories like this additionally important is when artistes are able to bring their own fears, emotions and desires to the fore.
On a slightly more modest note, Shantaram claims to not have envisaged the interest the work has garnered and continues to garner. “It’s as if the work has taken on a new life,” he says. Although he is unsure of what form the work might mould itself into, for the near future he is working on an essay to be published as a contribution towards an academic book slated to release in 2018.
“My job is to simply go on doing the work,” he says, simply reiterating the importance of pursuing a project with passion and diligence without fretting over its fate.
Prosper, Tanzania / Bangalore. Photo: Mahesh Shantaram. Courtesy: Tasveer
Mahesh Shantaram: The African Portraits are on view at the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art, Kala Ghoda, till December 10.
The author is a Mumbai-based freelance photographer and writer.
