Kolkata 9-5; Working on my street photography project

Nov. 9^th, 2011

My next ten days or so were spent wandering Kolkata. I had decided to start working on a photography project around the streets of the city. I wasn’t sure what form it would take yet, but I was feeling a creative urge as well as an urge to devote myself to some sort of project. I also felt the need to explore Kolkata some more, and some sort of street photography project was a great way to get me away from Sudder Street and into unfamiliar neighborhoods. I wasn’t sure exactly how to begin, but I decided to start by just taking portraits of people at work. I was nervous at first, as I had always felt that Kolkata was not the easiest place to take pictures, as people were not always receptive to it. After I took my first portrait, though, it started to come easy and I found myself really enjoying the process. Some days I would volunteer in the mornings and wander neighborhoods in the afternoons.

The first portrait I took. It didn't make it into my portfolio, but this kind man who irons clothes for a living made me feel at ease when I took his photo.

Men move a cart full of grain sacks through the streets.

Sometimes I would just wander neighborhoods all day. I would try to get far from Sudder Street, but sometimes I would find neighborhoods nearby that were both interesting, inviting, and didn’t seem like they were used to foreign volunteers walking the street. In fact, it took just a small effort to get away from the streets where volunteers usually walked to find people’s attitudes towards someone with a camera change for the better. Occasionally people would refuse to have their photo taken, but usually they were receptive and even felt honored that I cared to take their portrait. I enjoyed meeting the subjects of these pictures, but even more so, I enjoyed how this project was a vehicle for me to see parts of the city that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I am not that good at just exploring for exploration’s sake, even though I always enjoy it. I need some sort of motivation, or goal to achieve that requires aimless wandering to get there.

One of the neighborhoods I walked through was full of people recycling different materials. Kolkata always has certain districts or streets that seem to specialize in one kind of profession, service or trade. There might be the neighborhood where you find dozens of people selling used tires, but that would be a totally different neighborhood than the one that sells tire scraps and products made from tires (such as brake pads and other car parts). So this street I came across was almost unique for hosting a wide variety of people collecting recyclable products. There was the man who collected bottles, another who was pulling rubber casing off copper cables to get at the precious metal, and others who were pulling apart electronics to find scraps of usable metals.

A man poses in front of his sacks of bottles that he has collected and sorted. This neighborhood was filled with people involved in recycling various materials.

Recyclable scraps of metal.

A copper wire recycler.

While I was talking with some recyclers and taking photos, a mobile advertising vehicle came rolling through the street. It consisted of a man on a bicycle with a cart attached to the back. A man in the cart spoke into a microphone, which was attached to a crude megaphone speaker on the handlebars. They were making announcements for a local shop that was offering special deals for 100 rupee saris.

Mobile Advertiser

I also came across a lively game of cricket going on in the streets.

Bicycle Repairman

Art at the entrance to the metro.

Another day, I went exploring with Joe. We took the metro up to Dum Dum, the last stop on the line, then just walked. The neighborhood was calm and inviting. It was easier to breathe out here.

Florist in a market in Dum Dum.

Carpenter

Smiley boy in Dum Dum.

Noodle Maker

Mansion with penguin doors. Penguin doors?

Joe stands in for a portrait.

Brick Layer

Dum Dum seems to be a quickly developing neighborhood full of construction on the outskirts of Kolkata. It will be interesting to see what it looks like in ten years.

Joe will be a model one day.

I had some fun shooting portraits of kids hanging out near a pickup soccer game.

Notice his Trail of Tears Remembrance Motorcycle Ride t-shirt.

I know it's not nice to laugh, but this spelling is pretty good.

And this is even better. Famous American Jumba?

Ran into the carpenters again.

It is hard to tell in this photo, but if you look closely, you will see that the picture on the ground that the man is drawing is mustache-free.

One night, I decided to walk around the Muslim neighborhood not far from where I was staying. I was both on a quest for beef kebabs and some photos. I really wanted to get a photo of a butcher. The first one I asked, though, said no. And of course his shop had the most interesting light of any of the butchers I had seen. Next door, though, I was invited in by a friendly man with green eyes. We chatted for a bit about what I was doing, and he asked me to sit down next to him. A boy ran and got some tea for us. I was amazed at how good his English was for being a clerk at a butcher shop. He said that he was just covering for his father, who owned the shop and was feeling sick that day. He actually worked in IT and seemed like he was doing pretty well for himself. He liked the photography project I was doing and appreciated that I was actually engaging the people I was taking pictures of before just snapping away like most foreigners he saw. I took pictures of the boy working for the shop as he hacked up a chicken.

Down the street, I saw a beef butcher inside his shop. I wanted to take pictures there, and asked a young guy outside if I could take pictures of the butcher within (who had his back turned to me). He yelled back to the butcher in Bengali, then told me it was ok. The tall butcher slowly turned, knife in hand, and he almost took my breath away. He was an imposing figure, but most of all, he only had one eye. ONE EYE! I guess, see for yourself. I felt weird about this picture. He seemed, to me, one of these misunderstood monsters of fantasy that really has a kind heart once you get past the appearance. Hunchback of Notre Dame, Edward Scissor Hands, etc.

That night, I also paid a visit to a cobbler I was familiar with, whom I would frequently pass when looking for beef kebabs at night. I was really getting into taking the portraits at night. Although the low light was difficult, I loved the mood that the single incandescent bulbs gave as they loomed overhead in the shops.

Cobbler

Tire Salesman

Launderer

Bike Builder

Motorcycle Mechanic

Pharmacist

Another day, I took the metro about halfway to the end of the line going south and walked around for a couple of hours. There was a major thoroughfare that had a lot of action and nice light on it, but I got bored of it quickly and dipped into a quiet adjacent neighborhood. There wasn’t as much to photograph within the neighborhood as there was on the busy street, but I still welcomed the calmness of it. It was almost uneventful, until I started to hear nearby voices raising and saw people looking out their windows or from the roof tops. There was some sort of altercations between a young man, and what seemed like the rest of the neighborhood. It didn’t get too violent, but it seemed that the man was simply being chased out of the neighborhood by a small mob. Women yelled things down from their windows and kids shook their fists. I didn’t know what was going on, but after the commotion was over, I asked somebody. He just smiled and said, “Man is crazy.” That was good enough for me.

Portraits of important Indian historical figures outside the local headquarters of a political party.

Taxi Driver

Typist

Chai Wallah

The next day’s walk was one of my favorites. I walked from my guesthouse without much intentional direction. I came across a small university and thought it would be interesting to take a picture of a student for my project. As I set up the shot in the entrance way, A security guard came out and said “no photo!” I just played it off like it was all ok, and I wasn’t taking pictures of him. He didn’t speak much English, so I tried to use that to my advantage. He got in my face though, and made it very clear that I was not to be taking pictures of the school. I looked around for someone to back me up, which of course never happened. I went on my way. As I walked off, someone came up and asked where I was from. It seemed like innocent curiosity at first, but he kept asking questions, about my job, what I was doing there in Kolkata, what I was taking pictures of, and where I was staying. I stopped answering him and crossed the street. Something didn’t feel right about him.I continued to walk.

Chai Wallah

Tailor

This two-leveled tailor shop consisted of a man (lower right) and two of his sons.

I found these two girls playing around in a pile of papers that were, for some reason, scattered about the sidewalk.

Mechanic

These elaborate horse carriages are not a common sight in Kolkata.

Later, I met some friendly people outside of a mosque who wanted their picture taken and one person even gave me a sweet to try. I walked further and came across a decent-sized market. It was nice to walk through a market other than New Market, which can be unbearable due to the hustlers. This market was smaller, but similar, and I was not bothered at all as I walked its aisles. I spent time in a couple of cloth shops, considering buying some, but also just using it as a time to hang out and soak in the market atmosphere.

Flower and incense vendor

Tailors hanging out in their shop.

Chai Wallah

Boys at the market.

This one really liked to have his picture taken.

I returned home by walking through a part of the Muslim quarter that I had not been through before. It is not far from where I stay, but also not the kind of neighborhood that I would ever pass through normally. It was a convoluted maze of narrow streets. It felt like controlled chaos, and quite peaceful at that. Everyone was surprisingly friendly and receptive to my curious eye.

Rickshaw Wallah

I came across a little barber shop and realized I needed a shave. I waited for a man to get his hair cut, then got my shave. Then the barber, who was reserved, but kind, let me take a few portraits of him.

The neighborhood that I, and most travelers, stay in is not a nice neighborhood. Nor is it a slum, by Indian standards. It is simply urban with some rough edges. There were usually signs of squalor in the streets around our place. Human waste, needles, people passed out in the street. I knew that there were junkies that hung around the neighborhood, but only from what I had heard and seeing their waste strewn around the streets near where I stayed. One night, though, I looked out my street-level window and saw a man crouch down. He was focused on something, but I couldn’t tell what at first. Then I realized he was doing heroin. He was actually smoking it, with the aid of tin foil, rather than injecting it. This is actually a more efficient way of using the drug than injection. I was fascinated by what this man was doing. He had no idea I was watching him, but we could not have been more than 20 feet apart. I watched him for at least 20 minutes, and took some pictures. I admit I was being completely voyeuristic, but I couldn’t look away. People, dogs, cars, rickshaws all passed him by and he seemed completely unaware, or at least did not care in the least. I tried to imagine what life was like for a dope fiend on the streets of Kolkata. Living on the streets is hard enough without a drug habit. What is it like to have to buy drugs to feed your addiction, and earn that while messed up on heroin? Part of me wanted to just follow the guy and see how he would get by throughout the day.

Throughout this time working on my project, I was occasionally volunteering as well as plotting my next adventure. I needed to go and see more of India than the bits and pieces I had already seen. I had little interest in typical suspects like Goa or Rajasthan. Too touristy. Taj Mahal was too far away for me to go through that hassle. I had planned to go somewhere alone, but then it turned out that Joe was looking to go on an adventure too. He seemed like a good travel partner, so we devised an obscure plan to go to Bihar. Bihar, of all places, was a weird choice. It boasted one major tourist site (Bodhgaya, the birthplace of Buddhism), but beyond that, nobody seems to make an effort to see Bihar. It is India’s poorest and most crime-ridden state. It is dry, flat and some might call it uninteresting. Nevertheless, though, we were going there. We finished our last day of volunteering and on the way back, I took these pictures, a few last glimpses of the city for a while.

Mel at the Modern Lodge

The tracks near Prem Dan.

The slum on the edge of the train tracks, with a view of a modern housing development in the background.

A public bathing area. The picture of the waterfall seems a little hopeful.

Mel and Joe walking to the Modern Lodge near reminders to not urinate there. Everyone does it anyway.

This is Soyba, though we called him soy bean. He was a crazy little boy who lived in our guesthouse some times. He was fun, and would speak to us in Bengali, while we responded in Bengali. I liked him because he would be mean to the cat, while I couldn't bring myself to.

And then there was this political rally.