Image Caption: Residents try to extinguish fire at a slum in the Eastern City of Kolkata, India. Authorities say the fire started when a gas cylinder exploded. The fire in the slum which is located near Bidhannagar road train station, forced railway authorities to shut down the station disrupting local train services. One person died and over 500 shanties were destroyed.despair, anger, dejection...
I encountered all these emotions and much more while photographing the fire at the Basanti Colony Slum near Bidhannagar Railway station. While making the images when I felt excited about a frame..... I also felt guilty! The burning rubble under my feet was someone's home few hours back. How could I feel excited and happy capturing someone's misfortune. Sobering and humbling experience that forces one to ask all sorts of uncomfortable questions and introspect.
Were the shots of the crying kid who just came home from school to see her home burning; or the octogenarian shooing off scavengers from her burning shanty or the shriveled up dead body important ? I don't know. I felt like a voyeur preying on people's misery and decided not to point my lens towards these potential photographs. Clinically analyzing my frames later, when the immediate shock had worn off after a day or two I realised my images had missed to capture the emotions.... What I had felt wasn't showing on the screen.
Story of a tightrope walker and a thin grey line.....
reminds me of what Ed wrote about being in Pakistan hours after that huge bomb. if you didn't have such feelings you wouldn't be human - empathy is so important
ReplyDeleteI kept remembering Ed's story of his classmate who was excited to add some images to the portfolio....
ReplyDeletetrue - forgot about that one
ReplyDelete