Sarah Hutchins | April 19, 2010
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| Photo by Sarah Hutchins |
| Associate professor Steve Raymer talked about his work for this upcoming book, Redeeming Calcutta. The photographer has produced books on the region but for this work, he wants to document the city’s pressing issues. |
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Raymer was the inaugural speaker for the Center for Integrative Photographic Studies, a newly-formed center that aims to promote the study of photography across several disciplines, such as arts, humanities and, eventually, sciences.
The former National Geographic photographer is working on a book called Redeeming Calcutta. He has also produced books about Vietnam, St. Petersburg and the Muslim world of southeast Asia. Creating large-scale photographic books was an idea former School of Journalism dean Trevor Brown pitched to Raymer, as an alternative to "chasing magazine assignments."
After his last book about India in diaspora, Raymer wanted to focus on a narrow topic. He has experience in city photography, doing National Geographic magazine articles on Chicago, New Delhi, Kabul and St. Petersburg, Russia. But Calcutta presented it own special set of challenges. To capture the city, Raymer spent a total of two months on the ground, mostly in one-, two-, and three-week increments. Working in India was expensive, he said, and daily expenses would often add up to more than $300.
But the high cost of living was only one of the challenges Raymer faced during his time abroad. Access to people and places turned out to be one of his greatest struggles.
"There is a fear of photography in Calcutta that I haven’t seen in other Indian cities," Raymer said.
Calcuttans, he said, do not want to have their pictures taken. The mistrust of a "foreigner with a camera" made Raymer’s quest to document the history, geography, politics and culture of the country more difficult.
"I hope my photography speaks to many of India’s pressing issues," he said.
Raymer said there are two different schools of thought surrounding documentary photography, both of which he hopes to incorporate into his book. The first is to use photography as a tool to preserve a time, place or era. The other focuses on documenting social evils or ills, often as an impassioned advocate.
"I want to record the best of Calcutta’s past and document its present and future," he said.
Part of this mission involves departing from the traditional imagery of India – the slums, the poverty, the prostitution. Raymer said he witnessed "wrenching poverty," but that he tried to channel his outrage and sorrow into intimate images.
"Calcuttans want someone to re-image the city from their point of view," Raymer said, acknowledging that it might be impossible for an outsider to do this.
The images, Raymer knows, are never the whole story. He said he will return to Calcutta for at least two weeks this summer, snapping some of the final images for the book.
"There’s a lot of change afoot in Calcutta," he said. "Ten years from now this will be a city quite transformed from what we see today."
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