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VASA Front Page Exhibition #63
VASA Front Page Exhibitions presents the work of emerging and established photographers, video or sound artists.
Swarat Ghosh
"Beyond Street"
© Swarat Ghosh
Curator: Sandeep Biswas
Artist Statement:
India is known for its diversity and the streets are unique. The prime motivational factor behind this particular body of work Beyond Street is to capture life around the everyday ordinariness of India in my own unique manner - unattributed moments of beauty, grace, absurdity, sorrow, delight, outrage and more. It is that magical space where I can communicate and create dialogues with these unknown and unposed strangers with whom I unintentionally built a strong bond with.
In fact, the neighbourhoods across India are very different from one another when you travel from rural areas to small towns and the larger cities. It feels like movie sets, with something changing constantly, with new characters appearing on the stage and interacting with each other at any point in time. From simple everyday occurrences to new encounters that ripple out and touch people continents apart - a great street photograph often merges them all memorably. It reminds me of the famous quote
“AII the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players”
-William Shakespeare
Being passionate about street photography, I am pursuing this particular body of work little more than five years. Ten years down the line this project may have the social/cultural value of how streets/spaces/neighbourhoods in India are perceived and captured by someone belongs to this part of the world and which in time will form a part of the (visual) history of this wonderful country.
Curator Statement
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players” –this William Shakespere quote, works wonderfully in the settings of Swarat’s observation and imagery which he derives from the everyday life on the Indian streets.
Indian lives can not survive without their inadvertent performative world of action and drama a wonderfully vibrant, colourful and cinematic everyday Indian setting. Here various colours and their shades of life are distinctly evident in these stark black and white images.
A country like India, which some photographers conider as the Mecca of street photography has an immense possibility with no dearth of subjects and never a dull moment.
Most people in the Indian urban world live quite basic and ordinary lives, yet they create an extraordinary world for themselves with help of their never ending and highly complexed cultural and social engagements. Humans, animals, even non living objects and constrained spaces equally and quite acceptabily coexist sharing every possible inch around them.
Swarat’s body of work “ Beyond Streets “ is an exploration and only a fraction of the moment within these highly dramatic and festive lives. One can witness the scarecity of quietness or one might even feel and imagine an uncanny resonance while going through the images one by one.
©Sandeep Biswas
About the artist: Swarat Ghosh
Swarat Ghosh is an Indian photographer based in Hyderabad.
His photography has been published in several national and international magazines, including but not limited to - The Washington Post, Burn Magazine, National Geographic Traveller, and International Street Photographer. His work has also been presented in Brussels, London, Paris, Glasgow, Istanbul, Thailand, Pondicherry, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Swarat is ex mentee of Agency VII’s mentorship program.
Furthermore, he was nominated for the Joop Swart Masterclass 2019, organized by World Press Photo. During that same year, he won awards under the “Series” categories of two major street photography festivals - the London Street Photography Festival and Brussels’s Street Photography Festival. In 2017, he was a finalist in “Lens Culture”, a street photography competition. In 2016, he won the prestigious “Neel Dongre Grants Awards for Excellence in Photography”, organized by the India Photo Archive Foundation. In 2018, his work, “Beyond Street”, was featured in a print exhibition for the Indian Photography Festival in Hyderabad, as well as an exhibition for North Carolina’s Eyes on Main Street Wilson Indoor Photo Festival. In 2017, his photographs were screened at the Odessa/Batumi Photo Days 2017 in Georgia, and the Photography Festival Maribor in Slovenia. His earlier work has been displayed on several platforms, including the Pondy Photo Fest Pondicherry 2014, in Pondicherry, India.
History
Swarat was born and brought up in the Black Diamond district, also known as the Coal Capital of India, Dhanbad. His parents currently reside in the suburbs of Kolkata.His father is a retired General Manager of BCCL, and his mom is a housewife. His elder sister is a freelance content writer working in Kolkata. His wife is a primary school teacher and together, they have a 9-year-old son called Sheyan. He is thankful for his family, friends, and colleagues for their enormous support and for being his source of inspiration as he continues his journey in the field of photography.