Beyond the headline

An exhibition by photojournalists tells stories of life in Kolkata

These are not about deadlines or jostling for camera space with fellow photojournalists. The works on display at "Photo Features or Picture Stories", an exhibition at Kolkata's The Seagull Foundation for the Arts, are about a gamut of stories - from life and struggle in East Kolkata Wetlands to snapshots from the Nandigram-Singur movement - captured by seven city-based photojournalists.

"This is what we work on when we are done with the chalu kaaj (regular work)," says Suvashis Mullick who has been a photojournalist for 25 years. Mullick's work, "East Kolkata Wetlands", covers an entire wall at the exhibition. The pictures depict the beauty of the wetlands near Kolkata's IT hub -Sector V. Only 12,000 hectares of the natural and manmade wetlands which once covered 30,000 hectares now survive. The rest have been turned into Salt Lake City. These wetlands recycle sewage naturally and are home to more than a hundred species of plants, 52 species of fish, a variety of birds and endangered animals such as the mud turtle. Illegal landfills by the construction industry now threaten this fragile ecosystem. "I felt the need to document it and create awareness about it before things change," says Mullick.

"Each photograph is a story in itself," says Aroop Datta, photojournalist and curator of the exhibition. Take, for instance, the collection of pictures titled "Intimacies" by Kushal Ray. These capture the lives and times of a Bengali family living near Kalighat in Kolkata. The photographer lived with the family for four years and was a frequent visitor for another six. The outcome was Intimacies, a book of photographs by Ray and essays by author Kunal Basu. The black-and-white frames take you through the life of Manju Chatterjee, a professor who chose not to marry so that she could attend to her elderly mother. There are pictures of her taking care of her mother, then dealing with her death, her own struggle with cancer and osteoporosis and ultimately, of her death.

While Ray brings out the art and beauty in the mundane, Sucheta Das jolts you with black-and-white pictures of little boys and girls engaged in bidi-making in Murshidabad. Titled "The lost childhood", these are snapshots of lives of children learning to make bidis at age four, counting them by age six, delivering them at age eight and visiting the hospital for ailing bidi-makers when they aren't yet teenagers. A life of nausea, headaches, lung infections, tuberculosis, cancer and exploitation stares them in the face.

Then there are pictures by Bijoy Chowdhury of powerful moments from the Nandigram-Singur movement. Titled "Revolt against SEZ", the pictures show women sowing rice, villages agitating against the special economic zone planned on their lands and the face-off between the villagers and the police.

The story of the Nandigram violence has been told a hundred times, but the chilling starkness of people fighting for territorial rights can perhaps never be emphasised enough. Chowdhury's camera freezes on the frame of a man shot dead by the police, his body lying on a bare hospital bed. Nearby lie his rosary and a spilled packet of puffed rice. You are left wondering if props were added. But then sometimes journalists can't help adding an extra dimension to a story.

The exhibition is on till August 19