Is it a casing? Is it a box? Or a document perhaps, one wonders. Tightly bound by thread twice over, Witness/ Kashmir 1986-2016/ Nine Photographers , resembles anything but a book. Untying it seems almost ritualistic, like re-opening a well guarded secret. As the cover flops open, exposing the spine, your heart skips a beat. You cannot help but wonder if you had anything to do with damaging this brand new copy or if your luck ran out with being sold a faulty piece. You gradually come to realise that this one won’t be a quiet flip of the hand. Witness demands all your attention, mind and heart, and an agility to deal with the surprises it consistently throws at you.
Building memories
Featuring over 200 images of Kashmir by nine photographers shot over the past three decades, Witness ’s emphasis on being a photo book is evident through its radical use of the visual. Far from being an act of tracing the history of Kashmir, “It is an attempt to draw out the emotional landscape,” clarifies Sanjay Kak, filmmaker and editor of the book. The idea to work on a book had been brewing in Kak’s mind since he first interacted with locals from the Valley in 2011, while working on his documentary film, Jashn-e-Azaadi (2007). Their collective failure of memory beyond a point, struck a chord with him. “It’s like looking at something with your eyes shut and then piecing together the bits with your eyes open”, explains Kak, detailing the process in which memory is called upon to create something tangible in the present from a hazy past.
Come 2014, and an opportunity by the Dutch Foundation to work on a collaborative project in Kashmir that coincided with the floods that year – the worst in a century, made the idea of the book concrete for Kak. With the Jhelum breaking its banks, drowning all in its path under ten feet of water, many photographers lost precious work – both film negatives and files stored on hard disks. Suddenly the need to archive, to document and preserve history as one recorded and remembered it, rose to the surface. Kak, quick on the uptake, drew up the plan to start work on Witness , a project that would look at Kashmir through the eyes of photographers native to the land.
Ways of seeing
Starting from the earliest work featured in the book by the oldest of the group and ending with the youngest, the book traverses genres of photojournalism, documentary photography, not necessarily news oriented, as well as personal work on the region. “There are two ways of looking at Witness ”, informs Kak. One, where you start from the beginning of the book and go through each photographer’s work individually, reading through the text by both the artist and a short biography by Kak himself.
The second option takes you to the bunch of yellow pages at the very end, to the ‘chronological index’. A directory of sorts, here is where all images in the book are listed serially and interspersed with oft-repeated words that one comes across in the book. The index, another unconventional streak, is also the “designer’s intervention”, adds Kak. He goes onto explain how Sukanya Baskar, who designed the book as her diploma project at the National Institute of Design, actually made a trip to the Valley before starting work, to know and feel Kashmir locally. Kak realised that each of the featured photographers contributed much more than just their share of images to the book; that their histories and personal journeys are inextricably intertwined with the history of Kashmir. They represent, in part and whole, what Kashmir is from an insider’s point of view. The need to therefore look at their biographies and let their personal voices come through with both images and text became imperative.
The final cut
The anthology commences with Meraj Ud Din’s or MD’s (as he is fondly called) black and white images of the initial years of conflict in the late 80s when things began turning violent. Something of a legend, MD has shot for several leading publications within and outside Kashmir. His historic images like the assassination of Justice Ganjoo or crackdowns on homes by Indian forces in the 90s and ‘gun shows’ by the militia, bare the relatively easy access that a local photographer had to both sides then - the insurgents as well as the counter-forces. Fold-outs and gate-folds accentuate the impact that the already striking images have, when seen in isolation. These design elements – a common feature through the book – flow in sync with the muddled state of affairs in Kashmir, where unexpectedness and suddenness is normalcy. By virtue of being photojournalists with varied degrees of experience, all nine image makers have shot the conflict in its various stages from the protests and stone-throwing to attacks and their aftermath. But a unique vision and distinct style is what primarily makes each body of work stand apart from the other.
Javeed Shah, who shot extensively for The Indian Express through the 90s took a starkly different approach to documenting common situations. Often making the front page, his images of encounters and calamities are way ahead of their time with their unconventional framing and unusual composition. Often showing just a part of the image, like feet or a cropped face, his tilted and diagonally oriented content combined with minimalist content makes for edgy viewing. Kak, in his edit of Shah’s images does justice to this bold storytelling, one that is reminiscent of Soviet montage, an editing technique where a series of images when strung together in succession, bring out the gist of the narrative.
Younger voices
Another photographer who experiments with not just the content but also form is Sumit Dayal. One of the younger lot, Dayal’s work – a mix of personal and found archival photographs from local studios – is distinct in its non-linearity of placement, owing to time and distance. Made on his return to Kashmir after almost two decades, and shot on a range of cameras including a Mamiya and a medium-format Holga amonst others, Dayal’s images stem from past memories that collide with the present. His winter series of images evoke a sense of inherent romance, unperturbed by the ceaseless violence that seems to have seeped into everything else around. “There is a certain grip about my childhood memories from Kashmir, and a past I must unfold to know who I am,” says Dayal in his biographical note.
Showkat Nanda, whose recent work documents mothers and wives of the ‘disappeared’ - men allegedly picked up for questioning by the forces and who never returned, from distant mountainous areas like Kupwara and Uri. The youngest of the nine, 20-year-old Azaan Shah tirelessly focuses on downtown areas in Srinagar to shoot life unfolding in its everyday, are other exceptions. Growing up in a digital world, the two have had larger access to newer work and trends in the field, than their predecessors. While Nanda won a scholarship to a Master’s program in Photojournalism at the University of Missouri, where he believes he learnt to “devise his own strategy”, Shah is well versed with international work including brilliant and yet lesser known artists like Sergio Larrain. Syed Shahriyar, a member of the Shia minority documenting his own community and its peculiarities of tradition, also falls in the same bracket of new-age practitioners in search of their own voice within the larger framework of the socio-political unrest in Kashmir.
Breaking convention
There are some stories like the one of Javed Dar, whose father sold ancestral land to buy him his first camera kit, that moves one far beyond the realm of regional or religious identities. Dar’s photographs of migrant workers enjoying what is probably their first ever snowfall or birds taking flight against an ink blue sky speak to the more humane side of the viewer. For a moment you find yourself looking at a new Kashmir, one that is in stark contrast to the staid images of grief or saturated touristy snapshots that we are used to in our mainstream feeds.
Being wire photographers with the Associated Press means an archive full of hard hitting news by both Dar Yasin and Altaf Qadri. But in their edits for Witness, Yasin’s ‘acrobatic’ stone throwers caught in mid-air or Qadri’s bridal procession show a keen departure from overtly obvious and regular news photography from the region.
Fractured reality
Studying Witness is like watching a good film. One that demands multiple viewings to understand its layered dialogue, where the more you see, the more you will see. “One of the intentions of the book was to look for the images that didn’t make it”, Kak affirms. Referring to the edit mandate he followed, it invariably leads one to wonder about the absence of images on the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits. In response, Kak explains how the absence of an image is also a statement. Silence in its muteness does not negate actuality, merely makes it inaudible.
Another conspicuous absence is that of women photographers whose work would have added a different perspective to the already rich and textured stories emerging from within the Valley. While acknowledging this omission, Kak chose to stick to his mantra of content over gender, caste or any other points of difference.
Despite the missing pieces, Witness is a strong collective of voices that finds a platform to be heard through this personal anthology.
Witness Kashmir 1986-2016/Nine Photographers is available at Amazon.in (₹2,700 onwards; Trilogy, Lower Parel (₹2,500)
