Sohrab Hura: 'I really enjoy being open to chance'

Hindustan Times

5 hours ago

Please take me through your journey into photography. Was it informed more by the aesthetic aspect, or an urge to express your ideas and thoughts?
For me, it was catharsis. Immediately after my schooling, my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1999, and I started taking photographs in college after my father gave me a Nikon FM10 camera. I realized that it kind of got me through a tough time. My studies had gotten affected because of the situation at home and photography made me feel like I existed. So that was my relationship with photography. I think in many ways, that's also kind of helped form the relationship even today.
During my university days studying economics, I assisted a very kind photographer on his trip to Ladakh for about 10 days. I learnt from him and was doing my own thing. It wasn't planned. I didn't think I would be an artist or anything close to that. Even the other mediums came by themselves over time. It wasn't something I really sought out to explore. A lot of my work happens accidentally and by chance. I really enjoy being open to chance, to not quite know where something will lead to, but also to remain quite open, and being able to identify when something is happening and to grab onto it. So, for me, photography was very anticlimactic. After coming back to Delhi from the trip, I gave my film rolls for processing to a lab. The lab person liked the photos a lot and asked me if I was a professional photographer. I think that moment kind of made me feel worth something. Until then, I had felt quite invisible because nothing seemed to work out for me.
How do you meet your subjects? Is it something that happens instinctively, or do you seek out specific themes and subjects?
Very often, we easily assume that the artist is a reflection of the person. But the way many of us operate is that we look consciously for these subjects. The way I have always worked is that, for me, photography is an excuse to be myself. I think as people, we all are shy in some ways. Photography always allowed me to indulge my curiosities, which could be anything, and I never kind of know what I'm doing for a long time, till the work emerges. So, I'm not really looking for subject matter. I go more by instinct, looking at something that draws me, something that stays with me, even if I happen to be there by chance, and I use photography as an excuse to maybe return to that point.
You've got photo books published. Most of your work is self-published, right?
I used to self-publish. Now I've started publishing with Mack in the UK.
Did you approach galleries or art institutions or publishers? What were the challenges you faced?
I just went and published on my own. I didn't approach anyone. Mack had reached out to me many years ago, but then I was continuing to publish on my own. And then finally, I thought it was logistically easier for me to go with a publisher because I was doing many other things at the same time. I think the primary challenges in self-publishing were more to do with logistics and being on your own. Sometimes parents would help; like my father helped me to ship out books. I think there's something quite beautiful about self-publishing. And based on my self-published books, Mack wanted to work with me. Even today, I still design my own books and do everything. They take care of the logistics because they're very familiar with my self-published work. So, I've been quite lucky, and even the galleries approached me on their own.
You've held exhibitions at prominent galleries and institutions and your work has received the appreciation it deserves. I'm curious to know the impact of your work on those who have had zero to little association with the arts.
I worked outside the gallery space for a long time. A lot of my work existed in the real space. I did my master's in economics from the Delhi School of Economics and right after that, I went on this trip called the Rozgar Adhikar Yatra in 2005, where I'd been asked to help document the Right to Food movement. They were trying to propose a bill that would finally go on to enact MGNREGA. And so, a lot of my work was involved in that. Many of my friends who have been collecting the archive of that time tell me there isn't that much documentation of the time except for mine. I had got a fellowship to work further on what was happening there.
Even in a place like Kolkata where there a lot of galleries, the general audience also really engages with anything cultural, including many university professors or students. In the last year and a half, I've been getting a lot of requests from school kids to engage with them on the paper that they are writing. So, in some ways, that generic audience has always been the more interesting audience, because they come without the baggage of the artistic audience that often pays too much attention to the medium itself.
I think the non-artistic audience is really looking for stories, and I'm primarily interested in stories. For me, the form and everything else is kind of secondary. A lot of my books, especially the self-published ones, are mostly bought by people who have nothing to do with the arts. The art people usually wake up to it a bit late. I remember someone from Bombay who runs a salon wrote to me saying that she was interested in photo books and doesn't have a photo booklet, and she wanted to begin with mine. My mother's doctor has my books because he has seen me as a kid and my earlier works deal a lot with mental health. So, I'm quite glad that my work resonates with people from different fields and not just artists. And at some point, these lines sort of blur. Also, since I've worked with diverse, multiple forms, the gallery for me comes right in the end. Before that, I try to showcase my work at film festivals.
For instance, my first exhibition was in Pati in Madhya Pradesh. The relationship of the people there with photographs was very different from the gallery crowd. They were looking at every person in each photograph and identifying people from different panchayats and villages. So, in a way, multiple forms do lend themselves to multiple audiences.
But having said that, I also don't want to make work that determines an audience before it's made. Sometimes there's a danger of compromising my work if I get too conscious beforehand about an intended target audience. For me, that question arises at a much later point, after my own sort of negotiation, which is also to take responsibility for my work. So, I need to begin from a place where the relationship begins with me, and then I can think about these other sorts of eyes on the work.
Which artists have really inspired you?
It's very difficult to say this. In the beginning, obviously there were a lot of older classical photographers like Josef Koudelka. But then, at some point, I realized that I've spent many years also working with younger artists, photographers. I got a lot more from their work, because working with them, looking at what they were doing, was also keeping me more in touch with the pulse of today. And somewhere along the way, I think I've quite cut off from looking at other photographers, because then that makes you conscious.
The photographs that other people consider to be my work are not really the work. The real work for me is the engagement on ground, the process. The photographs are simply the residue of that process.
Arun AK is an independent journalist. Twitter: @arunusual