Witnessing Kashmir through the Lens of Nine Photographers

In the everyday practice of photojournalism in Kashmir, some photographs, taken by photojournalists as part of their routine work, later stand out from the rest of the images they take – for capturing moments beyond their ephemeral significance. These stay with you, linger, demanding to be relooked and revisited for the deeper memories and feelings they evoke. They tell larger stories, too – of joy and pain in Kashmir – in frames of fleeting moments forever captured for the posterity.

About two years ago, in a unique collaboration, documentary filmmaker Sanjay Kak began sifting through the works of nine Kashmiri photographers, while also talking to them about their life and the challenges they faced in bringing out these images. Eventually, he selected around 200 photographs, covering three decades of the valley, 20 to 25 photos of each photographer formed the book, Witness: Kashmir 1986-2016: 9 Photographers. Independently published by Kak, the book was supported by two grants that helped in carrying out the research.

Syed Shahriyar / Family finds shelter on Dal Lake, Srinagar 2014

“Art is not just a decoration for politics here, in fact art is politics and it’s not just about documenting Kashmir but also about producing art through these images,” Kak said at a recent book release event in Srinagar. “The photo book is also an attempt to show how young and talented people are beginning to think their way through in their terrible situation.”

Between its diligently spread out pages, some of them folding out from the book frame, small postcard size images that fall out of the book, it gathers an archive of memories and feelings in its selected images, vividly capturing various facets of life in Kashmir from the early 1980s till present. More than just the photographs, the book also engages with the life stories of featured photographers, by including their brief biographical sketches that provide context to the images they make. Born in 1997, Azaan Shah, the youngest photographer featured in the book, likes to play with the shadows, the natural lights in his images evoking the unique character of downtown, and the quiet life of the streets of old Srinagar city.

Azaan Shah /Shopkeepers outside Jamia Masjid, Srinagar 2015

For Meraj Ud Din (born in 1959), the oldest photographer from Kashmir whose early works–black and white photos from the early 1990s and before–are featured in the book, seeing it in his hands for the first time brought back all those years and images he had lived through and captured in the turbulent past of Kashmir.

 Meraj Ud din / Kuka Parray and Ikhwan, Sumbal 1995

“This book should reach a lot of people,” said an emotional Mehraj at the event, ruing the fact that he lost many of his precious images in the 2014 floods. “Many young people when they go through the book will know what happened in Kashmir before they were born.”

Dar Yasin, an AP photographer based in Srinagar, said being a photojournalist in Kashmir is not easy. “The security forces think we are part of the people while the people think of us as some extension of government machinery,” he said. “It becomes difficult to work and shoot in such conditions.”

Yasin said in early 90s people would run away from encounter sites in Kashmir, but now they fearlessly run towards the encounter sites to protest in front of armed forces who are engaged in gunfights with the militants.

Javed Dar / Migrant Worker Family, Anantnag 2015

“It’s not easy for us to work among people who are charged up and angry,” said Yasin, adding that he also understands their anger as people have not seen any visible change on the ground over the years even after pictures have come out in the international press.

However remarkable a photojournalist’s image is, it comes out in the press one day and the very next day it disappears from the public memory, he added. However, Dar is hopeful that the work produced by photojournalists of Kashmir will endure and become part of the history. “A day will come when our pictures will change history.”

For Sumit Dayal, who returned to Kashmir after 18 long years in 2009, being part of the photo book gave him an opportunity to look inwards, experiment with images, ask questions about his home coming, his identity and his self. Brought up in Kathmandu and trained at New York’s International Center for Photography, Dayal’s return to his roots found him working with found images, photos of family albums, for example, and images discovered in old files and local studios that evoked a different idea of home.

Sumit Dayal / Abandoned Pandit Home, Srinagar 2011

“This was an opportunity to find space and express those questions,” said Dayal, an independent photographer based out of Delhi whose works have been widely published in several international publications. “Story of Kashmir is a crisscross of cultures, identity and politics, so I turned inwards and got inside family albums, for example, to produce a different set of images that are part of this book and provide a pause in between other images.”

Showkat Nanda, an award winning documentary photographer whose selected pictures are also part of the book, said shooting in Kashmir means you’re always engulfed in a sea of mixed emotions being part of the same society you’re trying to capture. “Sometimes the best way to react to the situation is to keep shooting,” he said. “Sometimes you have to stop shooting and sometimes you come back without taking a single picture…”

Showkat Nanda / Protest at Cement bridge, Baramulla 2009

Javeed Shah / After a fidayeen attack, Srinagar 2005

Altaf Qadri / Aftermath of Grenade attack, Srinagar 2006

Sometimes, you don’t know how to ‘balance’ the situation as “neutrality does not exist in the face of oppression,” he said.  For example, Nanda recounts, once in 2008 during the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad march taken out by people, a huge procession in his hometown in North Kashmir was fired upon by the paramilitary forces. “Every time I looked through the viewfinder, I would not only be clicking pictures of the dead and the injured, but also making sure that the bullet-ridden bodies are not that of a cousin, or a friend’s brother, the son of a distant aunt or a neighbor who had greeted me when I was leaving home in the morning,” he explained. “That is the biggest difference between covering a conflict miles away from your home and the war in which your kitchen turns into a battlefield.”

“Some stories don’t have two sides,” he said. “Some stories have just one side.”

The author can be contacted on Twitter @MaqboolMajid