Journal of Siddharth Jain

There are a two bodies of work by a couple of Indian photographers I saw recently which I wanted to share. One of them is by Gauri Gill and her work is called ” Notes from the Desert”.

I know from experience ,it is not easy to photograph in village ..Unlike the city ,not much happens in the village ..so its difficult to photograph and you really need to be there to photograph it..for which of course you must understand the village dynamics and know everything about it ..practical issues range from reaching to the spot in the village ,to finding a plug point to get the batteries charged and so on…Documenting an ordinary life ( that too of a village) can be bit illusive yet richly rewarding at the same time.

To bring it in focus of the real world too is a matter of courage. Why would anyone be interested in what’s happening at a village in Rajasthan ? Hence my kudos to Gauri.

This definitely takes some time to photograph and attracts our attention to reflect upon it.

Totally endorse her view on Why photography ? . Gill said she chose photography as an art form because it can be at once “deeply personal” and a medium “to take you out into the real world…. In an unequal world, photography has the kind of power to allow individuals to offer their personal interpretations” of that world and their place in it.

All images copyright © Gauri Gill. please check her website for more of her work

here’s what she has to say about her work

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Artist’s Statement
GAURI GILL: Notes from the Desert (1999-2010)

In April 1999 I went out to photograph village schools in Rajasthan. I had seen a girl being beaten by her teacher in a small school in Narlai earlier that year, and had been thinking about it. I came back to Delhi and proposed the story to the news magazine where I worked at the time – I said that I wished to make some pictures about what it was like being a girl in a village school, but there didn’t seem to be a suitable ‘peg’ for it. So I decided to take a month long sabbatical from work, and travel through rural Rajasthan.

I started by traveling around from school to random school, from Jaipur to Jodhpur, Osiyan, Bikaner, Barmer, Phalodi, Baran, Churu; from Government schools to NGO run schools, Balika Shivirs to Marushalas to Rajiv Gandhi Pathshalas; I met students, teachers, officials, NGO workers. They were tolerant of my ignorance and happy to show me around, to answer all my questions. I was an English-speaking person from Delhi, a distant world. In Lunkaransar town I went to visit a Marushala run by the NGO Urmul to try and educate nomadic Jogi children. I met Urma and Halima, who took me home, and I was introduced to the family of Bhana Nath ji. We sat in their hut, on the bed with the snakes and chameleons and rooster underneath it, with her brothers and their dogs, and they invited me to travel with them. In Barmer district, lost, I came upon a group of women fully covered in large black ajrak shawls standing around the corpse of a little girl. They looked intimidating but when I ventured to ask for directions to the school, I was interrupted by one who told me what was wrong with her life, and with great conviction impressed upon me that I should come to Delhi and tell people of the troubles of people in Barmer. Her daughter Janat was terrified of me in my jeans with my camera. But Ismat asked me for my address, and wrote to me, and asked me to return. I did.

The schools opened up an entirely new world to me. Over the course of the past eleven years the work has grown to encompass various parts of life, and changes that have occurred over time. I have witnessed various seasons, drought years and the year of a great monsoon – when Barmer became Kashmir, a flood, the building of new homes, followed the farming cycle, migration, working as labor in Rajasthan and Gujarat and Maharashtra, Food for Work programs, NREGA and other government schemes, nomadic travel, malaria, tuberculosis, epidemics, death from snakebite, from accidents, from growing old in the desert, the death of a camel in a year that is remembered as the year of the death of the camel, births, marriages, moneylenders, NGO interventions, dharnas and rallies, people fighting for change, national and Panchayat elections, festivals, prayers, celebrations.. and through it all my friends. To live out in the desert as a poor, landless person without a regular job amounts to an inescapable reliance on one’s self, on each other and on nature. The stakes are high, the elements close and life is as cheap as jokes are rampant. To sleep out on the icy cold sand dunes at night, in the winter, with only some tarpaulin and heavy old quilts means that everyone must huddle in together, along with the dogs, and breathe into the quilt. One isn’t quite sure what is what or who is who, in the huddle.