Indiana University School of Journalism

Photos by Crista Chapman

Associate professor Steve Raymer spent more than two years traveling to research and shoot photos for his most recent book, Images of a Journey: India in Diaspora.

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Photojournalists spend their lives tracking down images that can tell an entire story in a single moment. Associate professor Steve Raymer’s latest project took him all over the globe as he chronicled the Indian diaspora.

“The sun never really sets on India’s sons and daughters around the world,” Raymer said Friday afternoon in a talk about his new book, Images of a Journey: India in Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2007). About 40 people attended the talk that was part of the India Studies Department’s semester-long lecture series.

A nearly four year project, the book chronicles Indian migration’s ancient beginnings with a photo of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, a temple built by Indian migrants to honor the Hindu god Vishnu and wraps up with photos from modern Bangalore with ethnic Indians returning to the their ancestral homeland. Raymer traveled to 15 countries over the course of the project, with some countries easier to get into than others.

“I couldn’t get a journalist’s visa for the United Arab Emirates,” Raymer said as he explained that Indians in Dubai, a city in the UAE, are exploited for manual labor. “So I went as a tourist to be undercover to look at the situation there. Blue collar Indians are building Dubai.”

Despite the trouble he had getting into the UAE, Raymer said he felt the “warm embrace” from people of Indian descent wherever he went. And his travels took him far and wide. Raymer’s ports of call included Trinidad, South Africa, Malaysia and Great Britain.

Examining diaspora was not his first choice for this project. Once he signed on, Raymer said the story quickly enveloped him.

“In the spring of 2003, there were two articles about the Indian diaspora that caught my attention,” Raymer said. “My assignment for this project was to put a human face on the worldwide diaspora that’s taken place for over 200 years. It’s a story that’s largely been overlooked by the news media. And these are the stories journalists are always looking for, the untold ones.”

Friday’s talk was co-sponsored by the School of Journalism and the India Studies Program. The two have teamed up this year on a series of lectures and conferences dealing with the subcontinent. India Studies director Sumit Ganguly had high praise for Raymer’s work.

“What Steve had to do summoned up in me the lines of Edna St. Vincent Millay,” Ganguly said in the introduction to Raymer’s talk. “‘My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night. But, ah, my foes and oh, my friends — it gives a lovely light.’ And Steve’s work here certainly does that.”

Bloomington High School North student Lynae Sowinski wasn’t as poetic as Ganguly, but was just as impressed with Raymer’s work.

“I loved the photos,” she said. “They had really interesting detail to them. You learn a lot of what India is.”

Photo by Crista Chapman

“You have to anticipate action, that’s at the heart of what journalism is all about,” Raymer said. “You have to find the truth behind the facts and take the risk to get the very best photograph possible.”

The senior owns Raymer’s book and hopes eventually to enroll in the School of Journalism with the goal of becoming a photojournalist.

“I’ve always loved taking pictures,’ Sowinski said. “You can really humanize a story when you’re behind the camera.”

But getting the one image that does that isn’t always easy, Raymer said. He told the students in the audience that photojournalism comes down to two things: instinct and persistence.

“You have to anticipate action, that’s at the heart of what journalism is all about,” Raymer said. “You have to find the truth behind the facts and take the risk to get the very best photograph possible.”

In order to get the best photographs to end his book, Raymer returned to India for the first time since 1984. One audience member asked Raymer what struck him on his trip to Bangalore.

“I remember an India that was silent for the lack of vehicles,” Raymer said. “That’s not the case now. Now you have a country that is totally connected to the rest of the world.”

In addition to his position on the School of Journalism’s faculty, Raymer also teaches in the university’s Russian and East European Institute and its India Studies Program. Before coming to IU in 1995, Raymer directed the National Geographic Society News Service.

Images of a Journey: India in Diaspora was published by Indiana University Press and was released in September.

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