Photographer Kathy Shorr recalls the time she met a young man named Chris. He lifted his shirt to show a pink, puckered scar running angrily down the length of his heavily tattooed torso. A survivor of America’s rampant gun violence, he told her that it was the result of doctors working arduously to keep him alive.
Shorr’s work, and that of many others featured at the ongoing Indian Photography Festival in Hyderabad, is reshaping narratives around violence, societal inequalities and norms, issues that routinely dominate mainstream media.
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Aquin Mathews, director of IPF, who has worked on bringing in 550 photographers from 52 countries, explains, “Photography is an educator. The time, research and dedication that go into the iconic works on display have a deeper narrative. They make you feel some of the subject’s pain.” Other harrowing subjects at the show include socio-political isolation, life far below the poverty line, death and conflict.
Alain Schroeder from Belgium has showcased death in a frank, thoughtful, yet emotionally provoking way. The 63-year-old captured the Indonesian Rambu Solu ritual, where a deceased person is only considered ‘sick’ until their burial. During this three to seven day period, their family interacts normally with them — even offering them food. He notes that as he was with the families during such an intimate time, he naturally felt their sadness when it ended.
‘The SHOT Project’ by Kathy Shorr
For her project, SHOT — 101 Survivors of Gun Violence in America , Shorr travelled across the country for two years, with a few strong aims: to be geographically, socio-economically and racially diverse. Apart from that, she adds, “I spoke to survivors from the age of 8 to 80, from high profile shootings as well as local events that disappeared from the news the next day. Most importantly, many gun owners, including an NRA member are also included.” To communicate with her subjects on an ever-increasingly fragile subject was challenging, but having been robbed at gunpoint herself, she could understand the fear of having a weapon trained on oneself.
Memories of war
The realities of war photography are terrifying and not a reality many of us can truly comprehend. One of the most vividly remembered works in photography is former Associated Press photographer Nick Ut’s coverage of the Vietnam War. He was only 21 when he photographed the Pulitzer Prize-winning image of the ‘Napalm Girl’, nine-year-old Kim Phuc.
“That picture changed my life,” Ut says, adding, “I cried when I saw her running. I remember thinking ‘If I don’t help her and something happened to her, I’m going to kill myself.’” And so he rushed her to a hospital, saving her life. In his long career, he says, he has seen many media persons killed on the sidelines, and has had several close shaves himself.
While Ut continued working with AP till he left last year, Shorr has gone on to create a book based on her photo project. “I did not align myself with gun violence prevention organisations because I believe that they polarise the subject. I wanted everyone to look at this with an open mind,” she says.
While she has received backlash, she says for the large part, she has been able to engage in healthy discourse. “I had a very positive experience on a radio show in Montana, which is very much a gun state,” she recalls, “The politically-right-leaning host and I spoke for an hour, cordially and respectfully.” Her next project, Shorr says, “expands on the idea of gun culture and will be a crowd-sourced interactive archive of photographs, video, audio and text.”
While immersing themselves into these difficult subjects, is it possible to remain detached? Ut sums it up: “What I was capturing over a relatively short time period was the everyday lives of these people.” Being in that situation even temporarily does affect the human psyche. He advises that the next time you get to see a powerfully narrative photograph, don’t fight any emotive internal monologues — if it comes up, it means you have felt the strength of the image.
The Indian Photography Festival is on at the State Art Gallery, Hyderabad, till October 7, 2018
More exposure ahead
8 September: Art Talk: Prabhakar Kusuma, Rohit Chawla, Mahesh Shantaram and Vineet Vohra
8 September: Panel discussion: the journey of a photographer moderated by James Wellford
8 September: Lighting and direction with Sandro Miller
9 September: The art of editing with James Wellford of National Geographic Magazine
9 September: Fine art of travel photography with Mark Edward Harris
9 September: Instameet at Charminar
9 September: Art talk: Tasneem Alsultan, Ritesh Uttamchandani , Boris Eldagsen, Robin Schwartz and Melissa Golden
12 and 13 September: Workshop with Noor Photographer Pep Bonet
13 September: Art talk: Pep Bonet and Uzma Mohsin
6 October: Art talk: Anush Babajanyan and Giles Clarke
