If Hindi cinema portrayed a romantic picture of Kashmir, media brought us another image of the State. How did the people, particularly a photo-journalist, who witnessed everything first-hand perceive it all? Witness: Kashmir 1986-2016: 9 photographers attempts to present that side of the picture. Edited by Sanjay Kak, who is well known for his documentary films such as Red Ant Dream , Jashn-e-Azadi: How we celebrate Freedom , etc., the book comprises more than 200 images taken by nine photographers over the period of 30 years. Through the upheaval, they shot Kashmir for the mainstream media.
“Photography has a long history in Kashmir which used to be tied in colonialism and tourism. Then there was one kind of Kashmir projected by films as a landscape but many things changed between 1986 and 2016. From ‘86 onwards, Kashmir became a conflict zone. Photo-journalists were covering this without being aware of the change they were capturing,” says Kak. The acclaimed film-maker was in town to release the book.
Kak chose Meraj ud din, Dar Yasin, Javeed Shah, Javed Dar, Altaf Qadri, Showkat Nanda, Syed Shahryar, Sumit Dayal and Azaan Shah to tell the story as they saw it. “One was with a leading national daily, another was with a news agency or a local paper and they were taking pictures. It was like a flowing river. What if a book is to build a dam?” asks Kak.
From the oldest, Meraj, to 19-year-old Azaan, the pictures that have made it to the book are the outcome of personal experiences. “I went to take a print of Meraj’s picture and the way people reacted to it was amazing. The idea was not to use a dramatic picture or to build a chronological history of Kashmir but to capture new ways of seeing.”
Working with Kashmir Times , Meraj covered the incidents around the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, by militants in 1989.
The book has an interesting image of footwear strewn around in Bijbehara with a yellowish line running through. Kak tells us that the yellow line was the result of film getting exposed when a soldier opened it.
He says the book is as much about photographs as it is about photographers. And while there are a few images, like the body of Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, lying on the streets as people watch on, record a definite time and period in the history, the book doesn’t seem obsessed with documenting turning points in the history of the troubled State. “They are referred to peripherally,” explains Kak. The photographers employ varied styles to create the narrative. Sumit Dayal, a non-resident Kashmiri has an experiential style.
“He has taken a panoramic shot. He is not looking for shining images but allows for a deeper reading of what is going on.
Showkat offers a modernistic work. Azaan Shah is a photographer of the street.”
What he calls the spine of the book are yellow pages which have detailed captions with 15 keywords like militants, terorism, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen highlighted. These key words are again explained to the reader.
“Then there is also a text which is not art criticism, but rather telling people what was it like to be a 15-year-old in the ‘90s. The book is about these nine Kashmiris who grew up amidst all of this. How did they respond and not everybody responded equally.”
The project was partly supported by Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, under their culture in defiance programme and India Foundation for the Arts.
(For more details on the book visit www.facebook.com/witnesskashmirbook and yaarbalbooks@gmail.com)
