We would wake up before the sun had risen, when it was dark and still outside. In rideshares we would speed through empty streets and witness the city gradually awaken. Sometimes we would arrive at our destination and the sky would still be dark, other times the sky would look like blue alabaster as the sun rose behind a skyline unfettered by physics and building codes. The places we would photograph included flower markets, fruit markets, fish markets, near mosques and temples, any locus of human activity.
The flower markets were fragrant, the scent of flowers commingling with the smell of car exhaust and perspiration. They were arranged into mounds by type, the loose blossoms ready to be strung. By daybreak the ground was transformed by miniature dunes of various colors, each a different pile of flowers.
The fruit and vegetable market consisted of a street which had been taken over by vendors who piled their produce along the sidewalk and into the street. The scene was a frenzy of human activity. We went from the bright, crowded streets to the dark, dank interior of the fish market. The wet pavement and glistening fish reflected glints of outside light. Fishmongers counted their money. We walked slowly and carefully trying not to slip on the wet pavement while avoiding puddles of grey water and blood, and the occasional cat scurrying past our feet.
As we walked, weaving and bobbing through the crowds of people, we shot at a steady clip. I was shooting digital on a ILCE-7SM2 and film on a Mamiya RB67 Pro SD. Any time I shot with the RB67 I would slow down. Because I was shooting without a light meter I would check my exposure beforehand with the 7SM2 (or my companion, Antonio, would check for me with his own camera). It wasn’t a perfect method, but the format, and in particular the film I was shooting, provided enough latitude that I knew I could be over or underexposed by two stops and still capture a usable image. Given how cumbersome the camera was and how precious few rolls there were, I would only pull out the RB67 sporadically and always with clear intention. I would check my exposure with the 7SM2, frame my subject through the waistfinder of the RB67 and stand still, my neck craned over the waistfinder, until my subject was in position, the slap of the mirror punctuating the release of the shutter. Sometimes I would take a second shot for safety, but usually not.
In Varanasi we walked down to the river and walked along its banks from ghat to ghat, first in one direction then the other. At sunset we hired a boat to take us on the river. Once night had completely fallen the river around Dasaswamedh Ghat turned into a floating stadium as boats crowded along the river bank to witness the Ganga Aarti.
(As I write, I try to remember details that I only now realize never took the time to remember, and I have to wonder if my shortcomings as an artist lie in the possibility that those may have been the details worth remembering.)
The camera’s gaze isolates everyday moments and in so selecting elevates the banal, recontextualizing and rearranging life into art as it passes through the proscenium of the frame. But the act of taking a photograph is a selfish one, particularly as an anonymous photographer. I steal a moment or a face for no other reason than my own libidinal desire. And given my anonymity I narrativize the photograph based on whatever set of values and standards I’ve internalized and assimilated, with no institution or individual intervening on behalf of context or objectivity.
I give nothing back to my subject, not in a material sense at least. There exits a momentary solidarity between the subject and I during the process of taking a photograph. The creative act in some inexplicable sense renews what little faith I have that the world will someday make sense. Yet I walk away with more than a renewed sense of well being, for my subject has left me with a photograph, the accumulation of which amounts to a body of work. I pluck a stranger from the slipstream of quotidian life, in some cases a more brutal life than my own, only to toss them back into that slipstream when I am satisfied like a fisherman who catches a fish only to release it. From the perspective of the fish this constitutes a brutal and inexplicable interruption of daily life, even if the fisherman perceives the proceedings to be harmless and humane.
Did I capture a slice of life? Did I capture a story or merely a set of cultural signifiers that satisfy a vague and nebulous desire for decontextualized exoticism?
Whose story am I telling through these images if not my own, and only my own. In many ways a story of privilege: the privilege of an American passport, the privilege of debt, the many socio-cultural privileges that as a cis-, hetero-, able-, neuro typical male make certain aspects of daily life, an by extension travel, easier.
But I am also a POC, I am working class, my parents are immigrants; sometimes just being in a place with few faces resembling my own feels like a kind of victory, a kind of resistance by taking up space in a world that would rather I sink into the background.
At dinner with some friends, an older couple visiting from Los Angeles, the conversation becomes about travel. When we tell them our plan to visit India Adam tells us his brother currently resides in Delhi. His brother is, by their account, something of an eccentric savant, the black sheep of the family.
Later, when we are asked about having children I confess that I am an antinatalist. As I explain what that means, Adam looks at us incredulously, with a hint of involuntary disgust, the kind of expression that arises when one is witness to the violation of a natural law. Recognition flashes across his face as he comes to understand we share the same madness that afflicts his brother, Black Philip. Of course from where I am seated they’re the mad ones, slaving away for the mere pleasure of consumption, for the relative safety of conformity; the American Dream.
I have poor financial planning skills according to some. I’m inclined to agree with them. Given that I am not likely to ascend very far socio-economically over a lifetime whatever my effort may be, I see no reason to forgo travel. It requires a shift in priorities that can be summed up as a process of narrowing our consumption to include only those things which improve your quality of life in a meaningful, material way. What this means and looks like is different for everyone. This is not to say that as I grow older, and the future looks ever more bleak, that I do not worry about my financial security, but it isn’t my sole preoccupation (call it myopic).
I saw this trip as an investment in myself, both generally as an individual and specifically as an artist. It was an investment that would pay dividends in experience, as I was forced to push at the edges of myself. A blitzkrieg of growth and, thus, creative output. I was as excited for the discomforts that lay ahead as I was for the indulgences, as I conceived novelty and discomfort as vectors for this growth. What I did not consider at the time was the dichotomy of circumstance that made this possible (and which I was exploiting), for I admit that the most exciting aspect of the trip was the inevitable return. Always in the back of my mind was the thought that no matter how bad it got all I must do was endure my misfortunes before the aeroplane over the sea carried me back to a life of order and cleanliness (as if American metropolises are not themselves overcrowded, environmentally degraded and lacking in social services).
When we took to the crowded streets of Old Delhi or Varanasi we bore witness to the way cities seem to shrink or expand depending on the time of day, the way the crowds move in a kind of syncopated unison that simply swallows you if you allow it, the delicate dance between pedestrian and driver which collapses delineations of sidewalk and street into the single, medieval category of road. Human activity so concentrated that you are confronted with the seeming chaos of tides so numerous and individual as to constitute a flood, like so many intersecting lines which to the naked eye appear to be only a knot. And it was here as we navigated through the crowd, stepping into traffic wherever the sidewalk narrowed, reaching out to touch a passing bus the way a child reaches for the chain link fence as they rush by, stray dogs scampering between legs and around beggars who altered the flow of pedestrian traffic around them like monoliths of stone alter the flow of rivers, it was here that we realized there is an order to this chaos, but that which imposes this order is life’s tendency towards survival not society’s tendency towards stringency.
We were more than happy to go on these excursions through the city because we knew that an oasis from all this human misery was awaiting us in the form of one or another American hotel chain or air conditioned home stay. This was Indian life experienced in fits and burst, interrupted by Uber rides and room service, and therefore incomplete.
In the gardens of Mehtab Bagh, as we looked for a way down to the riverbank without alerting the solitary guard, we were approached by a group of boys who wanted their picture taken. We spoke to them, took their portraits and showed them what they looked like before we carried on and were again approached by a man and two adolescents, one younger than the other. They too wanted a picture, but this time they wanted a selfie with us in the frame. I obliged as I could think of no reason not to, and in exchange I asked that they let me take their portrait. We shook hands and thanked each other before parting ways.
As we continued to wander the periphery of the gardens we realized that even if we found a way through to the other side, the boys from before were following us and in turn a guard was following them.
The boys seemed tirelessly fascinated with us, asking questions about our lives and volunteering bits about their own. They asked me to show them the camera gear I had with me, and one of them took a couple of out of focus portraits of me. All the while the guard followed from a distance, far enough to give us privacy yet close enough to alert us of his presence. It was only once we had circumnavigated the entirety of the gardens and were once again in the center of the garden, close to the parapet separating us from the riverbanks below and the Taj across the Yamuna, that he approached us, as did an older man who a moment earlier had been stretching under a citrus tree like a runner preparing for a race. He too wanted to meet us and take a few pictures with us. We learned that he used to be the head of the Agra police force, but was now retired.
When we left them under the citrus tree the boys again trailed behind us. The retired chief of police yelled something to the kids who in turn turned around and yelled something back. After their short back and forth I slowed down and asked the kids what they had been told, although I had an inkling despite the language barrier. One of them, the one that seemed to lead the group, struggled to find the words as he indignantly explained that the retired chief had warned them not to bother us. “But we are good boys. We go to school,” he said.
Reactions to my photo taking fell along a spectrum between emphatic desire to participate and a disinterested handwave away, most simply carried on. Though rare, there were moments when I felt unwelcome, as if I was intruding like a character who had wandered from a different stage and was now reciting lines incongruent with the plot. It only occurs to me now that perhaps the increasing rarity of these occasions was the result of my growing hubris, and not simply evidence that I was fastidiously learning how to lose myself into the background of life. When I look back it is clear that I was never going to master the art of being incognito, and to ever think I could do anything but standout was clear evidence of my naïveté.
As I walked the streets of New Delhi or Kolkata it is true that I was invisible, that people paid me no more attention than they did the many stray dogs, that they walked by carrying their loads in their arms or on their heads without so much as a glance in my direction. It is true that as I moved through the crowds I was invisible, until I was not. I was invisible until someone wanted their picture taken, bearing witness to the lie that I was ever invisible in the first place.
I am a tourist; although I strive to avoid the label it is unavoidable. The travel industry employs “influencers” who sell would-be travelers the idea that the shift from tourist to local is merely a question of authentic experience or sometimes just authenticity and experience.
To call myself a global citizen would be to white wash the relentless march of imperialism where we go out into the world and make our identities and values ubiquitous, imposing them not by force but by our dollar in a manner no less violent than armed invasion.
Nation states have to invest in the industries and push the cultural narratives that best prop up their tourism, doing so in economically opportunistic ways that appeal to the tastes of global capitalism.
Take for instance the Day of the Dead parade held in Mexico City, now a yearly tradition. A “tradition” that has its origins as background spectacle for the opening of Bond flick Spectre. A “tradition” borne out of the opportunistic fetishization and commodification of Mexican culture by global capitalism: they have taken something from our culture, bastardized an aspect of it and sold it back to us. The irony of the Catrina, a revolutionary figure defanged by recontextualization as mere costume, is not lost on me.
Some might argue that cultural expression is cultural expression, whether in the context of some mythic folk purism or state-sponsored spectacle. Of course this wouldn’t be the first time capitalism births a beloved tradition as a marketing ploy. And it would be dishonest to paint the event with one brush, for whatever its origins the parade has been a vector for symbolic political expression.
However, symbolic acts of solidarity by the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie on a platform meant to encourage international tourism and not advocate revolution is not enough to uplift the working class in materially meaningful ways. Merely encouraging tourism is not enough. Even if you argue that increased tourism leads to increased economic opportunities, the distribution of these economic opportunities is not uniform being that the Mexican working class is itself not a monolith (no working class is) and being that many times these economic opportunities are exploited by corporate interests. These corporate chains provide employment, but what good is employment when wages do not keep pace with the cost of living.
The question of who has access to the burgeoning economic opportunities that a tourism industry at scale can provide is compounded by the fact that it is usually the poor and working class who have to bear the worst effects when the growth of tourism outpaces the growth and maintenance of vital infrastructure and social services. Tulum is an example of this: a lot of tourism dollars go into the pockets of foreign expatriates who have set up expensive yoga retreats and plant-based restaurants, crowding the coast around the booming beach town and taxing its infrastructure.
This isn’t to say travel should not be undertaken, but we should ask who get to travel where, how and why? The identity of the world traveler, the global citizen, is not available to every human on this planet, it is not available even to most.
On one of our last days in New Delhi we headed for the Red Fort only to find it was closing as we arrived. The evening was still hot and bright so we decided to walk around. We found ourselves in a park behind the ruins.
There I took the portraits of some kids who approached us with baby goats. After, they demanded money which I gave to them out of guilt, and which they took to some adult figures under a tree who had been watching from a distance. The oldest one had a look in his eyes of someone much older and wearier, and looking into them I experienced an uncanny valley for his face was that of a child’s but his eyes were not. The younger ones were more shy though they approached with curiosity nevertheless.
I continued photographing kids during the duration of my trip, some at their behest and some at the behest of the parents. None asked me for payment after this, and for better or worse, none had the same weary look.
But the people I remember most vividly are not those I photographed, but those I did not: the guard at the building where our final home stay was, the woman that followed us for a city block with her hand outstretched, the baby craddled between his parents as they slept on the sidewalk on a cardboard flat. We walked past them carrying bags laden with groceries from the shopping center down the street: the one with the designer stores, with the cinema and two levels of restaurants, with the underground supermarket, and the bus stops with the benches where people slept underneath, who we also passed and did not photograph.
I started to consider the reasons for why I photographed what I photographed, began to question why I photographed anything at all. I tell myself that all I am doing is finding and documenting human stories, even when photographing a landscape or still life. The implication there is of neutrality, but couched within the process of documentation is the act of selecting, and with it all the inherent bias and prejudice of taste. The matter of unpacking my taste is complicated since it is a complex of aesthetic preferences mediated by subconscious, and therefore seemingly unrelated, ontological biases and prejudice. Who or what I choose to photograph is not merely a matter of color, form, symmetry or quality of light, for photography’s democratic approach towards subject matter has shown that any subject viewed from the right perspective can posses one or all of these photogenic qualities. That which dictates what a photographer will photograph is also that which dictates who they will vote for president or the contents of their suicide note.
In her critical assessment of Diane Arbus’ work, Susan Sontag writes, “Photographing an appalling underworld (and a desolate, plastic overworld), [Arbus] had no intentions of entering into the horror experienced by the denizens of those worlds. Her view is always from the outside.” When I reflect on this I realize it applies to my own work, at least that undertaken in India. Sontag points out that although Arbus was drawn to photographing the ugly and the maimed her subjects were ahistorical and apolitical, she “was not interested in ethical journalism.”
Others who write of Arbus’ photography tend to read a kind of empathy in her work (which Sontag seems to believe is absent in the images themselves), seemingly in accordance with the progresssive assumption that representation is itself a political victory. To the working class however, this makes no difference for this representation is almost always sanitized, tokenized and removed from their struggle. Sontag makes neat work of Arbus, reducing her body of work to that of a voyeur, a tourist of the human ghetto motivated by boredom and fascination.
My own privilege extends just far enough that the sight of that child sleeping on the sidewalk sent me reeling into a long night of drinking and commiserating about the state of things. I suspect that what put me in a melancholic mood was not merely the sight of the child’s suffering, but my own guilt at doing nothing.
Sontag’s essay on Arbus and her photography has become a Rosetta Stone for understanding my experiences while traveling through India. When I think back to my conversation with Adam and Barbie, think back to my response when asked why, I wonder if my desire for growth, for pushing at the edges of myself as I put it, is not merely the same impulse as Arbus’ to “violate her innocence, to undermine her sense of being privileged.”
A new genre of content is being pioneered on YouTube. These videos follow a similar rubric: a white, male foreigner walking through the slums of Mumbai or the heart of Old Delhi with a camera trained on himself as he walks through the streets affably interacting with the locals. The titles to these videos include “Would you dare ride on this Indian bus?” and “India’s worst Street.” I have to contend with the possibility that the only distinction between them and I is my pretension.
