Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
Coming up on Art Palace, I think photography for me becomes this protected mechanism which allows me to go and touch the world. Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell iig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's episode is a live recording of a conversation with photographer. So Rob Hora that took place on January 24th, 2020. The conversation was led by Nathaniel m Stein associate curator of photography and celebrated not only the closing of So Robb's exhibition, the Levy, a photographer in the American south, but also the release of the exhibition catalog, which is now available. 

Speaker 2 (00:01:02):
Hello, hello and welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here at the Cincinnati Art Museum tonight to celebrate with us the exhibition, the Levy of Photographer in the American South. We are starting a little late, but I'm so glad we got you all in the room, which took some time. So thank you for your patience with that. But before we do begin the discussion tonight, I do want to acknowledge a few folks for the roles that they have played getting us here tonight. First, I somewhat unconventionally, I suppose. I want to thank all the many guest speakers and participants who helped make the public programs around this exhibition so rich and often so profound. So the Friday and Sunday afternoon chats that took place around the picnic table in the gallery, in the exhibition gallery, for me truly became moments to pause, to be with art and to be in conversation, which certainly for me is really one of the highest goals for what we're doing here. 

Speaker 2 (00:01:58):
So that was a good time. I had like to also thank Cameron Kitchen, who's with us tonight, who is of course the director of our museum who has spoken and written with eloquence about the meaning of the levee in this place that we live, and who also saw the importance of the museum's acquisition and exhibition of this work early on. So thank you for that Cameron Thomas Schiff whose generosity is simply a fundamental force for photography at this institution and in our community more broadly speaking. Thank you, Tom here. Some thanks Tom and Peter and Betsy Niho, who unfortunately could not be with us tonight, whose support helped make possible The publication of the exhibition catalog, which I'm delighted to see is in some of your hands already. I'd also like to express my gratitude to the contributors to that exhibition catalog, many of whom were also on the journey that the book deals with. 

Speaker 2 (00:02:50):
So artists including Jim Goldberg Onlay, Alex Soth, ML Ky, and of course Sora Pura writer Chris Tel, and my colleague in the photography department here at the museum, Emily Bauman, who has also been instrumental in making sure you're all seated this evening. So thank you, Emily. As always, knowing that a conventional exhibition catalog just would not do for this body of work, we co-published the exhibition catalog with an amazing independent press based in Chicago called Candor Arts. And they have been exemplary creative partners, willing and eager at all times to explore every possibility with me, even though sometimes I know. I ask them to explore possibilities that were slightly beyond the pale candor, designed and indeed handmade a book that I believe is a beautiful thing unto itself, regardless of what words and images are inside it. And sitting among you tonight are two of the people whose hands actually did that work of making the book. So Hannah Batal and Katie Chung of Candor Arts, thank you for making that book over there. 

Speaker 2 (00:03:56):
And finally, I'll thank you for joining me and welcoming to Cincinnati, the artist whose work is the genesis of all of this rah pra. So with those important words said Sirah, let's jump in to the conversation. I actually plan to say a bit about, to sort of set the stage for folks about the project and your work, but I think given the fact that we're a bit behind schedule, I might abbreviate that a little bit, but just to give us some basic groundwork for conversation, you were born near Calcutta and for many years have been based in Delhi in India, you're a self-taught photographer who works in the fine arts sphere as well as being affiliated with magnum, which as many of you will know, is the most renowned entity in the sphere of what would be most easily described as photojournalism, although that's a small word for a very complex process or practice. And it is through your connection with Magnum that you were invited to participate in postcards from America, a project that has been going on since 2011 to 2016, and it was in 2016 that you were invited to participate in that project. Do you want to say a little bit 

Speaker 3 (00:05:04):
About what postcards America for America 

Speaker 2 (00:05:06):
Is or should? 

Speaker 3 (00:05:07):
I mean first I just want to say something. 

Speaker 2 (00:05:11):
Sure. 

Speaker 3 (00:05:12):
When I saw the P D F of the book, I didn't really, I just skimmed over it because I wanted to kind of experience the book in person, but then I had a quick look at the word of the acknowledgement page. I've always been working on my own and on my books. I'm designing, I'm doing everything now. My father helps me to carry the books to the post office. So that's the only collaboration I have. But it was the first time I saw, I realized how small a tip of the iceberg that I had experienced. It was when I saw the whole list of people including Arlo, who's his son and Henley. Given that these are things that many of us don't really acknowledge. So I'm really glad that I got to see what it takes to kind of bring everything together and I'll leave it up to you to explain. So talk about the postcards. 

Speaker 2 (00:06:12):
Okay. We have actually been talking behind the scenes about how complicated postcards is and how neither of us want to explain it because whenever you explain it, you're invariably offending someone who is potentially part of it. However, I will go into that territory as a sacrificial lamb in this conversation. Okay. So basically a group of magnum affiliated artists, privately organized road trips in the United States in America starting in 2011 and ending in 2016, where they were thinking about making photographs that perhaps for some of them were about saying something about contemporary life in the United States, perhaps for some of them, thinking about maybe that we haven't had that kind of body of work since the depression era, F Ss a photography, a body of work that does that with a certain kind of rigor and intelligence. For others, it was more about a kind of playful, collaborative way of working, being on a road trip together and all the things that you can imagine would go into that. 

Speaker 2 (00:07:11):
And for others it was perhaps more intellectually motivated and thinking about impasses around photography, around making photographs of others, around making photographs in places that you are not from. What is involved in that practice and what are the kind of risks and potential violences that come from that practice? And wanting to think about how do we push through those impasses? How do we not drop photography as an endeavor because it is problematic in some ways. How do we continue on? So there's a whole range of ideas about why people go on these trips, and indeed there's a whole range of different kinds of works that come out of them. However, 2016 was the last trip that postcards made, and it was focused on the lower Mississippi. So in April, 2016, a group of photographers began traveling from all sort of corners. You started in New York after you had come from India and other people started from the West coast and different places in the United States to meet at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi River Rivers in Cairo, Illinois. 

Speaker 2 (00:08:18):
And the notion was to follow the course of the river from that point down to New Orleans. And then some people went even farther. You went to pilot town. So there was a lot of variety in the roots that were taken. But basically that was the structure of the trip. This was not a part of the country that you had been in before. So you certainly have been in the US before, but not the deep south, not along the Mississippi River and the deep South. But your father had in a way, and this is sort of a critical turn in the body of work. So two months before you were there in April, so in the winter of 2016, your father who was, he's retired now. So I was a captain of a merchant Marine vessel was piloting a ship up from the Gulf of Mexico up to the port of New Orleans. 

Speaker 2 (00:09:03):
So because of immigration law, that means that if you're on that ship, you cannot get off the ship. So his father was on the river but was unable to get off the ship, whereas, so Rob two months later was on the land and had many times felt whether figuratively or literally unable to reach the water. So you have this sort of coming very close to one another on the other side of the world, yet always seeing from different perspectives always over a divide, one man from water and the other from land. And the significance of that circumstance I think kind of emerged for you over the course of the trip and through feedback from your fellow travelers. And what we encounter in the gallery here, the levy, the body of work that we encounter in the gallery is your pictures, which reflect your impressions and your experiences on land. 

Speaker 2 (00:09:46):
Those are the black and white photographs that line the walls, but also some of your father's pictures which were taken from the ship. Those are color pictures which were on a white wall in the gallery together with phrases that you receive from him in probably WhatsApp messages and text messages. And those are handwritten in his handwriting. And there's also two maps in the gallery, which are your renderings of your parallel journeys. And you hear Birdsong, which is a recording that you made while you were traveling, not just Mississippi. That's the lay of the land in terms of the project. To me, this always seems like a body of work that on one hand is so deeply and totally personal, but on the other hand is touching all these big shared human experiences, the experience of being in an unfamiliar place and finding a way to sort of come to terms with it, which is something you do a lot. 

Speaker 2 (00:10:41):
And also the sort of pain and joy that is about relationship, whether between parents and children are specifically between fathers and sons. And I've also sort of tried to help people or tried to frame this for people as a work that really asks us to think about the nature of one's perspective on the world that one moves through and all the sort of capillary factors that shape one's experience of a place and the way in which one would make pictures in the flow of that experience of a place. So that was a lot of information and there was no question in that whatsoever. So let me move on to a 

Speaker 3 (00:11:15):
Different 

Speaker 2 (00:11:16):
Line of approach. So I've mentioned now that there is this relationship with your father that's involved in this work, and you've actually already mentioned your father as someone that's helping you take your books to the post office. So you've described it to me as a difficult relationship, but also a relationship that's very important to you obviously, and a central relationship in your life. Can you help us understand a little bit about that relationship with your father and what you began to understand about it or see or feel about it when you were along the river? 

Speaker 3 (00:11:47):
Well, I'm not sure if I really understood it at that moment when I was along the river. I think a lot of things were happening, a lot of realizations were kind of coming in much later when I was putting everything together. I think for me, honestly, in a simple way, it's just to acknowledge a difference in the way we look at the world. We do have our fights and we do have arguments and so on, but at the same time, it's also about building something together. And for me, I think, and this is something that came up in our conversations when you are asking me questions, just for your own knowledge, because I began photography because of my mom, she wasn't well. And for me, photography was therapeutic. It was like catharsis and all this while I ended up thinking that I've taken to photography because of her. 

Speaker 3 (00:12:55):
But when you were asking me questions, I kind of realized that it was actually my father who gave me the camera when my mom wasn't well, when I went off to the mountains to make postcard photographs of sunsets and so on, which made me feel really good at that time. But then once when we were talking, I also kind of realized that he had also given me a camera when I was nine or 10 years old, and there's a photograph of my parents that I already taken at that time. So in a way, he'd already been part of the journey for a long time without having ever realized it. And while I was on the trip, I didn't know what I was doing. For me it was just being there and actually responding to it at each and every moment. But then I was talking, I just happened to mention my father and his journey up the river two months before me to the rest of the group, and they just sat in silence and they were like, why didn't you mention this before? No, in that there is something happening. And I think, I'm sure there was something happening because I kept talking about my dad and that he was up the river and he had told me to very, in a sort of an informal way to see what, he never got to see the city, new Orleans. He never really got to see what was happening. So he just told me, just tell me what's there. 

Speaker 3 (00:14:26):
And in a way, I was kind of taking some photographs, but not for the idea to kind of put it together and to make sense of it, maybe the way I can make sense of it today. And for me, I think it's in a way I made my first book to give to my mom where I could say something without, I'm not very good at articulating things verbally. I sometimes end up making books where I can write, where I can actually give these hints, have these little gestures that might say that I kind of care or I'm not happy with you. And in a way, I think for me, the book, the work kind of is that sort of a gesture for my father to kind of acknowledge that I acknowledge his way of seeing things as well. 

Speaker 2 (00:15:24):
I think to me it's always been quite beautiful to see actually how you incorporate his pictures and his words. And to me, the way I've described that to others in the gallery is that it feels by the time you get to the end of the body of work, you feel you two sort of reaching for each other through photographs, which is something that you are actually instating by, including his images and his words in the body of work, which I think as I said, is really, I find it quite moving. Speaking of which, the last phrase that one encounters usually, depending on how you install it and how you order it in a book is the phrase, tell me what's, when you get the chance, tell me what's beyond the levy. Again, a phrase that you've extracted from your father's words. And I'll say to me, that is an incredibly powerful phrase from a father to a son that pulls in all kinds of ideas about mortality. I know I was talking about death with my son last night, so there's a context for this, but mortality, the idea that you will go beyond him in some way that you can see in ways that he can't and his really acknowledging now, which is amazing. I mean, you've described him to me as a person that doesn't necessarily articulate his feelings freely, but I think he does in some ways. 

Speaker 3 (00:16:44):
See, I think I need to sit with you for a little longer and get to know about my life realizing a lot. 

Speaker 2 (00:16:51):
So what I've always been curious to ask is when you went back after you made the pictures and you decided these are the phrases that I want, that I want my father to write so that they will be in this body of work, what was that conversation like? What was it like to sit? Would you just sit with him when he was 

Speaker 3 (00:17:06):
Writing? Yeah, but see, my father's a practical person, so half the time he's like, who buys these prints? Why would anyone be interested in them? We do. I mean, he'd sent me these messages and then I kind of told him that because I think one of my methods is to write. I could have easily just taken extracts. I mean, I could have just printed out his messages the way as if they were SMSs or WhatsApp 

Speaker 2 (00:17:35):
Messages. 

Speaker 3 (00:17:36):
But somehow for me, in my larger way of working, very often handwriting becomes a part of it also because sometimes it reveals pauses or it reveals whether someone is trying to make the handwriting look good. So it gives me this extra layer of not just the words, but also sort of 

Speaker 2 (00:17:59):
Like the gesture 

Speaker 3 (00:18:00):
Gesture, but also the frame of mind. So the words for me become a little different in that sense. So for my father, when I first asked him to write for me, he wrote me really long paragraphs, but they were in shipping vocabulary. They were mostly about the current flowing, but using scientific language because he kind of knew that I was asking him for something for which she wanted to end up performing. So even in the other book, I've noticed this with my mom as well, where one of my previous books she had written for me and it was around her dog's death, but then when I asked her to write, she wanted it to be very good English. So her vocabulary, her language was very different in it. So in the beginning, I think both of them are quite self-conscious because they know that I'm making these books and they also want to be part of it in a certain way. And half the times I'm telling them that just write really bad English if you 

Speaker 2 (00:19:02):
Can. 

Speaker 3 (00:19:02):
That's so fascinating 

Speaker 2 (00:19:03):
Because in the books where you're talking about your relationship with your mom as she's going through mental illness, I mean, it's so interesting to think of her later being concerned about the appearance of her handwriting and the words that she's using because she's so completely vulnerable in the photographs. 

Speaker 3 (00:19:19):
I think my books in my work have also become ways for me to, in a way connect with my parents because I think my life is so different, and then it's the one thing that we kind of end up connecting on. And even my last book, I was trying to do everything on my own, but it was just convenient to take it to my mom's house, everything instead of carrying it up four stories to my big boxes to my place. So my parents will sit together and they will, my father, it's his responsibility, he'll call me and say, that has it box reached tippy bookshop in Belgium. He doesn't know tippy bookshop, but he knows the name. So I think he gives him something with which she can enter my life. And same with my mom. So when I was photographing her towards the end, I think she was kind of having fun. So she would, with Elsa, the dog, she would say, take this photograph, and then she would start performing a bit. So towards the end, I think it became a sort of a, I think my parents also ended up, I think there was a tendency to kind of perform, but then I had to kind of just say, it makes more sense if you're just let go and just be who you are. So even in the writing, he'd already, when had sent me those messages, unconsciously, these are the words from those unconscious messages. 

Speaker 3 (00:20:42):
So in the beginning when I'd asked him to write, he wanted to write really well for me because he thought that the people reading would really appreciate reading about shipping forecasts and the movement of the current and certain signals that are sent out during certain times. But I wanted to be more human and wanted to be who he was without being conscious of it becoming something. 

Speaker 2 (00:21:13):
So at some point you had to sit down with him and say, no doubt this, write this. 

Speaker 3 (00:21:18):
Yeah. Sometimes I have to be a little strict in that he said, he 

Speaker 2 (00:21:22):
Said, okay, I'll do that. 

Speaker 3 (00:21:23):
Yeah, he was like, but this is so ordinary. Whereas I 

Speaker 2 (00:21:29):
Find that extremely poetic. 

Speaker 3 (00:21:31):
So again, difference in perspectives, 

Speaker 2 (00:21:34):
It's appropriate to the body of work. So sort of a related topic, one of the Friday afternoon conversations that we had in the gallery, we had a guest who led an amazing hour where actually it 

Speaker 3 (00:21:48):
Was primarily 

Speaker 2 (00:21:50):
Members of staff who went to that one. And we all had our minds totally blown by this experience, but she was thinking about all of your work, not just a levy. And she really, she's a person that works in the mental health sphere and deals with people, helps people that are dealing with experiences of trauma in their past. And she saw your work instantly. She's just sort of turned to me and said, this is to me, to her way of looking, this is about healing. It's about him putting things back into order, which she was thinking about sweet life, which is the body of work that's about your mother, and then the levy, which in the context of that understanding is about your relationship with your father in some ways. So she really thought of it as photography, as a process of healing for you. And I know it's not always fun to hear a mental health professional's assessment of your 

Speaker 3 (00:22:43):
Work when you're not there, but 

Speaker 2 (00:22:44):
I'd be curious to know about your response to that, but also if she was talking about healing and putting things back together. But I am always struck by the ways that you, to my sensibility, keep yourself so raw and vulnerable in your work. So it's like on one hand we have someone observing healing and processing and coming together. And I am also seeing you really intentionally holding yourself and pushing yourself into a place of vulnerability and openness to pain. A lot of times you told me in a guy, I don't remember when it was, but a conversation since you've been here recently about that people were trying to make it easier for you when you were coming to the deep South. They were trying to find, for example, connections to the diaspora community for you to sort of feel a way in and you didn't want that. Can you talk a little bit about keeping yourself open and vulnerable in that way? 

Speaker 3 (00:23:36):
I think I was having a brief conversation with someone outside as well. When someone asked me if what I do, if they could call it street photography or call it something to help understand or put it somewhere where they can make sense of it. And I said that for me, I think photography becomes a way to, it's a privilege in a way because I think without photography I would've been quite nervous and hesitant to really go out and meet many of the people I'd photographed. So in a way, I think photography for me becomes this protective mechanism which allows me to go and touch the world. So in a way, when it was suggested to me, obviously I also don't want to be bracketed into being the South Asian person who's coming in, so maybe I can go and photograph Patel motels or something like that. 

Speaker 3 (00:24:30):
I think I really was wanting to be an empty vessel, which could be filled up with whatever there was. Whether the experience is good, bad, however it was, I think I wanted to experience it, and that was my only criteria. It was also something which was difficult because we were on the road trip for two weeks. How would I make sense of what I was doing there in just two weeks when I don't know the country at all. I mean in my previous visits had just been in Rhode Island in New York, and that's about it. And Evian talks about the south of the US being a completely different place. And at the same time, I was aware that I also came with my own prejudices hearing about the us about the violence. This is 2016, my father wanting me be careful. I think there are a lot of things around me that would make me assume a lot of things. 

Speaker 3 (00:25:36):
So it wasn't so much about me kind of consciously making myself raw or vulnerable. It was more trying to keep that in check whether I'm still an empty vessel or am I kind of filling myself up with all these other contexts that are being thrust upon me, which could be a matter of opinion or perspective or could be a fact, but what was I getting out of it? So I think that was also the only way I could take responsibility for what I was doing. I think in the end, I've always worked so much in India and I've worked in Australia as well, but mainly in India. And there's this constant need to kind of peel away at as many layers as possible because so many different contexts. But in a way, I had the luxury of being kind of ignorant to an extent. And I think I was not being weighed down by baggage in a way that maybe some other people in the group may have been. 

Speaker 3 (00:26:38):
And that became quite, for me, a very relief of a starting point, which is why in our first conversation in Cairo in a diner there actually, I feel so bad, I've forgotten the name of this one photographer from Cairo who Alec had brought in to introduce to us with this amazing book that he had done there before he came along. I think people were in general talking about loss of tenderness because of the way everyone at that time was being around all different political campaigns. And somehow for me, the first thing I could say was that actually I saw so many bird birdhouses in front of each house, and that feels really tender to me. And I think I could imagine the same for someone who's coming in from the outside to India where I might feel that right now it's things really bad back home, but someone else can come and actually notice some of the good stuff without that baggage. It could also be ignorance, but I feel that sometimes we need to let go as well of certain things to be able to reach somewhere else. And in a way, for me, it's not so much about being vulnerable, not vulnerable, it's about how much I'm holding back and how much I'm giving, and at the same time, how much am I allowing myself to experience? So I don't know if that makes sense, but that's my process unfortunately. 

Speaker 2 (00:28:17):
So do you want to talk a little bit about from that state that it seems to me it actually takes you a fair amount of energy, I think, to keep that it's a hard state to be in, it's hard to kind of keep other forces from filling up that space. What did it feel like to you to be in either the United States or the American South in particular? What were you getting? Well, 

Speaker 3 (00:28:46):
It was a mix of things. I think we talked about it in the beginning. I was very conscious of being an outsider. And I think I've mentioned it to you at home a few times about how I think the structure mean, the historical structure of the way people move has been such that from our part of the world, there's not that much of a movement outside. I mean there is to an extent, but it's very different from say, when you hear of all these expeditions that would go out to see the new sort of world. It was always happening from one part of the world to another. And even within photography, it adds into it where the structure was such that we usually don't go out of the country that much to photograph. Even in Magnum, sometimes when I get a message from them saying, can you go for this assignment there? 

Speaker 3 (00:29:56):
And I'm like, ah, I need a visa. You need to give me a few months notice. So those are the restrictions that they push me into working in a certain way and also experiencing things in a certain way. So coming to the us, going through a certain visa process, I've also been rejected once, not by the us, actually US was the easiest place for me to get a visa, but by the UK where they wrote to me saying, we don't believe you're a photographer. We don't believe you'll go back. And I had no way to prove that I was a photographer. I still don't have a credit card because apparently I, I'm not employed. I'm not valid. So these are things that stay in some form or the other. And so in the beginning I was very nervous because you recognize there's a different system with which things work. I don't want to get caught crossing a road when the signal says red and then be deported back home. I mean, this is a joke, but somehow these things are there at the back of my mind. So in the beginning I was quite nervous, of course, with my own sort of preconceptions to an extent, no matter how empty I wanted to be. And then 

Speaker 3 (00:31:14):
I think something inside me switched where I just felt like this is an amazing opportunity. I was in places I would never be in before. And I took a risk once where I went to a group of people where it seemed like other people are a bit hesitant to go, and they were looking at me and before they could say anything, I just said, I'm from India, and they just said the country. And I was like, yeah, and I'm a photographer and I would love to take photographs and I want to get to know certain things and so on. And it was very easy to have a conversation. And I think that broke the ice. So by the end of it, I would just go and say, I'm from India, I'm a photographer and I've come to actually explore this place. I think that became sort of a crutch that eased a lot of things. Just knowing that it's actually also me having to take a few steps and just not being awkward about, I'm usually a very shy person. 

Speaker 3 (00:32:21):
So that helped me to get over that awkwardness. And in the end, it was great because I didn't have to kind of box myself into being a lot of Indian photographers. They work on diaspora outside India. I think it's that one point of connection. And I somehow from the beginning, that was the only thing that I didn't want to do. I think I was open to everything else because I also have this complicated relationship with my identity of being Indian, because that's the question. I mean, politically that's the question that's quite relevant today back home, who's Indian, who's not? But also in general, when I think about it, I'm here talking in English. I'm wearing clothes in a certain way. I was telling people back there that I grew up during my puberty, M T V came into India. So there's that influence as well, which of course mixes with the influence of my grandparents telling me stories, Indian fables, reading a machata. I mean, I'm basically what you call a cherri. It's an Indian dish where everything is kind mixed. It's really delicious, but there is no categorization as such. It's comfort food. So in a way, that's what I think I kind of feel at ease with. 

Speaker 2 (00:33:45):
So 

Speaker 3 (00:33:45):
That's what I was trying to work with. 

Speaker 2 (00:33:49):
It's also been told more by others, less by you. So I'm curious to know your reaction to this has been, as it was explained to me, the Four Freedoms Group, which is an artist run political action committee, which was just getting started in 2016. So there was this real synergy between some of the values of the postcards from America Group and some of the values of the Four Freedoms group. And also there are some, Jim Goldberg was Hank Will Thomas's teacher. So there's some connections there between the two groups. And on this particular trip, the photographers, all the photographers who were on the trip received shooting scripts, which is of course a reference to F Ss a era photography when documentary photographers working for the F S A would get lists of things from the guy who ran that operation, Roy Stryker, to say what he wanted them to photograph. 

Speaker 2 (00:34:41):
And really as a gesture towards that history, and also I think to sort of see what would happen if that process was repeated. Everyone got a shooting script, that one, and yours, you told me, although unfortunately you lost it, so we could not put it in the book, but you told me it each was about the freedom of worship. So one of the four freedoms that Roosevelt outlined in the 1940s. And as it was explained to me, I think none of the photographers took those. I mean, these are all world class photographers who really don't need someone else to tell them what to photograph. But I think for each person, they opened them, they thought about it. It was interesting. Maybe it provided, as Jim Goldberg told me a way in on the first day to how do you start dealing with this world that you're in? Do you want to talk a little bit about how that script, what are the other three freedoms again, 

Speaker 3 (00:35:35):
This freedom of worship, freedom. Freedom. Freedom of worship is 

Speaker 2 (00:35:37):
Equality, freedom from want, 

Speaker 3 (00:35:39):
Freedom 

Speaker 2 (00:35:39):
From fear, 

Speaker 3 (00:35:40):
Freedom, fear, fear. And what is the fourth one? 

Speaker 2 (00:35:44):
Surely in this room we 

Speaker 3 (00:35:45):
Have the four freedom somewhere. But the thing is that, I mean, so I got freedom of worship. I wasn't really able to separate the freedoms because for me, each one, I feel each one is too linked to the other. I am not able to really separate one from the other. And I think this has a lot to do with maybe coming from back home where it's very difficult for me to really isolate one issue from another because the too many overlaps. So I did kind of respond. I mean, when I did see the person holding the mattress, for example, there was something extremely powerful about carrying a certain burden. And I think by then I'd already realized that religion and this whole, and you'll have to excuse me for stereotyping in my own way, but I felt like it was all quite biblical, a certain way with which people were writing words in the middle of the field. There was always messages somewhere or the other. And I think I had already kind of gotten into that rhythm of maybe looking at the landscape in that sense. So the photograph of the person carrying the mattress, it was a huge mattress and he was walking in an extremely gentle way for me somehow that felt this whole idea of carrying burden, whether it's burden of life. Later on, I realized that he had that Madonna sort of t-shirt looks 

Speaker 2 (00:37:39):
Like an age 

Speaker 3 (00:37:40):
Of which actually I think people in the rest of the group, the rest of the people in the group, they noticed it much before me, the t-shirt, the pornography, I'm not so used to actually working off identifiers, which they were more comfortable with. For me, it was just this whole act of carrying a certain burden with grace. So that resonated in terms of not so much worship, but more in terms of religion, whatever religion could be, whatever you might worship. But I also made recordings actually of a conversation with the taxi driver of New Orleans. I did many other things, which I felt were actually talking about the four freedoms in a more comprehensive, holistic way. But that was my take. But eventually I given this one single image just to respond to what I'd been asked for. 

Speaker 2 (00:38:50):
And so that was the picture that was exhibited that in New York in a show that was sort of inaugurating the four freedoms movement, if you will. I think part of the reason why I am curious about that is there are a lot of pictures of religion per se, actually in the levy. And as we all know, religion is a huge part of the American South, both historically and in the present. It's a very important part of what it is about to be there. I guess I'm curious about in what ways that felt either familiar or not to you. Again, I'm exercising my own generalizations here, so forgive me for that, but India is also a place where religion is tremendously a part of everyday life. So were there points of connection in that for you, or did it feel like something foreign or alienating? How would you characterize that? 

Speaker 3 (00:39:56):
I think in a 

Speaker 2 (00:39:56):
Way 

Speaker 3 (00:39:56):
It was maybe it was so familiar that I wasn't so conscious about the fact that I was adding in a lot of religious photographs 

Speaker 3 (00:40:07):
Of with motives that could allude to religion beyond a point because somehow the familiarity went beyond just religion or certain cultural thing. I think even the landscape down south reminded me of certain landscape back home in India going through Mississippi kind of reminded me a bit of Bihar in a certain way, which was these flatlands, I mean you have a lot of rice fields there, but there was a certain flatness to it. It gets flooded every year. It is one of the poorest states, but at the same time, it's a very politically astute state as well. So in a way, I think the gray skies, the flat landscapes, not so much the trees. The trees are very different, but that and of course a certain way, some other, the more south event, I don't know. I also ended up feeling more comfortable. People seem to be generous and quite warm and I mean the one thing about this country I felt is that people always having conversations, which has been the one different thing. And that was quite great that I think it was those things that were more familiar to me consciously, not so much because I think in India I would ignore the religious part. 

Speaker 3 (00:41:41):
I think consciously I would put that aside. There's just too much of it at times, and I think we all have grown up with it. So I'm not even that conscious of it at the moment. It's as much as I might want to call myself an agnostic atheist, whatever non-religious person, the truth is that we all have grown up with a big presence of rituals. Or my grandfather would chant om every morning, so he would count his ra. So somehow it's all religious, but at the same time it doesn't feel religious. It was the same thing there. I think. It wasn't so much about religion as such, but it was more about an earnestness or a belief. I think maybe also photographed certain motives or in a certain way because of the way people spoke to me, I think there seemed to be some sort of hope. There seemed to be a certain earnestness with which, with which the people would I think want to know what I was up to there. Maybe that felt familiar. I don't know if that makes sense. No, 

Speaker 2 (00:42:58):
Absolutely. It's interesting to hear your reflections on that. So I have, 

Speaker 3 (00:43:03):
We're 

Speaker 2 (00:43:03):
Conscious of time, so I have one question that's a more direct kind of question and then a last one that's a little bit more, we'll see what you make of it. A lot of people ask me throughout the course of the exhibition to explain on your behalf since you were not at that time here. So now you can do this about some of what I would broadly describe as a formal decisions that go into the photographs. For example, why are they black and white and not in color? Why don't you just answer that? 

Speaker 3 (00:43:32):
Well, 

Speaker 2 (00:43:32):
So 

Speaker 3 (00:43:33):
I think for me it might be, I hope it's not too complicated my answer. For me, the language I use with photography can be very political, the vocabulary. So my last book, some of my books are on the table. My last book, the Coast for example. I'm very consciously using a photographic language that has a certain history of, for lack of a better term, being candid 

Speaker 2 (00:44:06):
Just to fill in the coast is a very intensely color 

Speaker 3 (00:44:09):
And it's violent in a certain way. And because I'm looking at this idea of violence, I'm looking at the idea of building narratives, playing with narratives. I wouldn't really call it fake news because I think it's more than that. It's about power. It's about who controls information, who's the one disseminating information. So in a way, I've also used a language that feels raw, it's violent, but at the same time it also is seductive in a certain way where it might want you to also be a warrior to what's happening. But of course I'm kind of playing with the context. So in a way I'm sort of a puppeteer. And similarly, my first book Life is elsewhere at that time. This is something I realized much later, even that book is up in the gallery, which is all high contrast, black and white. It's more in the surrealistic direction. For me, I realized later that I was actually escaping a certain reality from home. I think I was trying to talk about my mom, but I think at that time I may have been so embarrassed about her having schizophrenia and I might have felt too vulnerable to really be direct about it. So in a way I felt today I feel that that is sort of an escapist work. 

Speaker 3 (00:45:34):
And then I was working with children and then I loved the way they were very in a carefree way. They were moving when they were photographing and they were not stiff. And I was starting to feel like I was getting extremely stiff, being very conscious as a photographer. So I kind of tried to take on that sort of a language children's kind of broken sort of a language in a way. So the work also became color. It became more direct because I think it was also about confronting a space back home. I had also started to feel more at ease talking about home. I think all of those factors came into play when I was coming to the us I think in a way, in the context of what I could have done or not done, this black and white, but the black and white is also not high contrast. It's more gentle, was also 

Speaker 4 (00:46:34):
Things are actually incredibly warm. 

Speaker 3 (00:46:35):
So it was also for me, a more neutral space. And I think that starting point may have allowed me to, maybe that starting point would've allowed me to find something rather than already having some sort of intuitive starting point where I knew not quite what I wanted, but I knew which direction I wanted to go because that's what happens at home. I respond. It's like a buildup already that's happening. But coming to the US for two weeks, there was no chance of a buildup. So in a way, one reason was that the other was just a practical reason because very often I just work with what I have and I work a lot on borrowed cameras. And someone had given me a lens for this camera and I had photographed someone's wedding dinner and turned out to be a friend, and I was very awkward about taking money and he gave me that camera. So I just went with it. And sometimes I'm happy to just go with it and see what comes, but it was a mix of these two when I was considering it, and it felt like I could allow for things to kind of come in a more gentle way because I think it's a bit like the whole tai chi where you're actually taking the energy and you're giving it back into the universe. I didn't want to just give, I also wanted to take something and respond and be able to give it out, 

Speaker 3 (00:48:07):
But as gentle way as possible because I was very aware of myself being the outsider, so I couldn't trust it upon someone. 

Speaker 2 (00:48:18):
So there's a kind of reserve in it in a way. 

Speaker 3 (00:48:22):
Yeah, I mean I'm holding something back, but at the same time I think it gives me more that language and the way of working gives me more space to maneuver the finer details. I was very conscious of not also doing certain because I don't know the politics of the landscape completely. And I think in a way that would allow me to absorb things that I didn't know. 

Speaker 2 (00:48:51):
Okay. I'm going to ask you one more question and then we'll open it up and see if there are things that everyone gathered here would like to know. One of another one of the gallery, the events that we had in the gallery was a really interesting conversation, an interfaith conversation about how we can think about how to sort of live in hope in a world in which there's a fair amount of pain, which is a suggestion I think, in your work, in this body work in particular, in a number of different ways. And one of the things that came up in that discussion, and one of the things that has been sort of an obsession of mine in writing the essay for this book is about water, and particularly about the river, not necessarily just the Mississippi River, but the river, broadly speaking, metaphorically speaking in some ways. 

Speaker 2 (00:49:37):
And being along the Mississippi was not the first time a river had played an important part in your life or in your work. All the folks that were gathered at that gallery event has some really interesting thoughts about the meaning of the river from theological perspective and other perspectives. And there are many ways to think about it. But can you say a little bit about either what the river has meant to you in your work, or another way I might sort of put that is actually this occurred to me fairly recently that a lot of your work has to do with journeys in some way, potentially. I don't know, it makes me wonder sometimes. What are you looking for? That's a separate question perhaps, but do you want to talk a little bit about the river or the journey as something that plays a role in your work? 

Speaker 3 (00:50:25):
Well with the journey, I think the journey is always happening. It's going on always. I think the flow of time in that sense gives me enough pauses to consider and reconsider where I am. So if I'm talking about a journey through time, my autobiographical journey in that sense, I'm conscious about certain moments where I might have been in a particular state. 

Speaker 3 (00:50:56):
And it also allows me to recognize some of the moments later down the line where I might be out of that state. And in a way, this thing of stretching out time, even a journey along the landscape for me becomes about time. It allows me to know that there is something that lies beyond where it's not so much the physical, but it's about me experiencing something along the way. I think this going back and forth, which this stretching out of the time or physical journey or whatever is important in general in my process because I think photography works at lots of different levels. One is I could be working photographing intuitively, but I'm putting something together with a very different logic. But by the time I've moved on from that act of photographing my understanding of the space, the world, my experience has changed. So I think this method of elongating, that experience allows me to reach some sort of an equilibrium after considering where I began from where I'm right now, who am I doing it for? I mean, even my books themselves were a journey in a way where I had made my first book in 2009, I couldn't publish it. I got the money in 2015, but I had moved way beyond the work. I didn't like the work, so I had to kind of consciously publish it for the 20 something year old me 

Speaker 5 (00:52:44):
Who 

Speaker 3 (00:52:44):
Could not afford to do it back then. So I think these are the kind of resolutions that I can sort of come to when I elongate my time space through this notion of journey regarding the river when my mom wasn't, well, I think I was visiting the Ganges, it's also photographer's playground in India. So it worked in all kinds of ways. I was learning photography there, but through the learning of photography where everything at that moment, it was about decisive moment. So focusing in a particular way was kind of distracting me away from my mom. 

Speaker 3 (00:53:34):
And that helped being, I would sit next to the river, the flow of water, listening to water. I think all of those things helped to calm me down. And you're right, I mean, I do end up gravitating towards the element of water quite a bit. Even the sea, I think maybe it's about not being settled, maybe it's about not being static. And in a way, I think when I think about myself, even the way I'm questioning things and questioning things, I think one thing I'm very conscious of is that I'm who I'm at this very moment when I'm having this conversation with you all, but maybe after a week I might be a different person. Maybe this conversation is going to actually trigger something off. And throughout my journey, I have lots of different inflection points and those are very important to me, which is also the reason why I keep revisiting some of my older works. So in a way, none of my works ever really quite complete. There's always a revisit to something which I might've done in the past, and then I look at it very differently and I need to kind of acknowledge the difference. 

Speaker 2 (00:54:49):
Okay, thank you. I feel like I've monopolized you for long enough. So if we have some questions and the audience, I think, so Rob has said he be delighted to answer a few questions. It is about 10 after eight now. So we're a touch behind schedule. So maybe we'll take three or four questions. If there are some, I should let you know that we are recording this conversation. But just to allay any fears that may cause you, if you do not want to be identified on the recording, don't identify yourself when you pose your question and nobody will ever know who you are. So feel free to pose questions with a careless abandon. Yes, I was struck by how parenting is saying the world over, and the one comment your father made was something that I 

Speaker 3 (00:55:32):
Probably have in past paraphrase to my children. And the comment was, if you go to New Orleans, be careful. I hear it. It's the safe. Yeah, I mean, in a way, I think children also the same everywhere where I see in Nathaniel and kind of with Arlo and he's running around. And I keep thinking to myself that that's exactly what I did when I was a kid. I think it's also parenting. Yeah, I mean it's about care. But at the same time, I think it's also about maybe if I have a kid, maybe I'm at the moment happy to explore everything and to really touch places that I might not have been to before. Maybe I'll also, if I have a kid and my kid wants to go out to a place where I have the slightest hesitation, I might sort of put that out. But at the same time, I think it would be my kid's role to kind of maybe make me feel that it's not quite what I think it is. So I found New Orleans to be an amazing place. It was beautiful, it was charming, it was, people were amazing. And it has its share of problems and anywhere else, I think it's not any different or any more dangerous, how my father might have thought. Very often, I think the more dangerous places are closer to home in some ways, which we take for granted. 

Speaker 6 (00:57:23):
But you as a child said, what I would have my children would say, which is I'm going to spread my wings. 

Speaker 3 (00:57:32):
So I think it's always this dialogue and maybe that's what Nathaniel, maybe that's the reason why he wanted to show the work. It was more about a dialogue and also to maybe acknowledge that we also always making sense of the world without really knowing about the world in a way. And maybe the world could actually be a little different if we reach out a little bit. 

Speaker 6 (00:58:01):
Yeah. You mentioned the first book you made was for your mother, and I was curious if you could share how she received it and also when you published it and shared it with a larger audience, how was that format? 

Speaker 3 (00:58:17):
So actually, I first made a book because I didn't have a computer and I had to actually take my work somewhere. So I made 10 books. I had not, when I photographed her for the first time, I felt really guilty about it. And I actually threw the negatives away because I felt that I was doing something wrong. And then I was also at the time working in the villages in India where a lot of kids would die out of malnourishment. And a week after, they would all want to share their stories with me, thinking I would change the world. And I had to keep telling them that nothing would change. And yet they were generous enough to share their stories with me. But then after a week or so, I would go back into my safe space in Delhi, be out with my friends. So there were these two parallels that were happening, which was, on the one hand, I wasn't able to really photograph my mom. 

Speaker 3 (00:59:21):
And then at the same time, I was struggling with this going back and forth between being with people who are really leading a hard life and then going back into my safe space and my privilege. So I attempted to photograph my mom as a way to earn my right to look outside. And it was very hard. But when I made the book, I had a few photos of her, but it was more to do with the right thing where I wrote about how much I hated her when I was growing up, how embarrassed I was. It was the first time I wrote it and I made 10 copies. The first one was given to her and I was quite scared. I thought that she would flare up, but then she really loved it. And then she was quite encouraging of me to do whatever I wanted to do. 

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
In the beginning of this, I kind of felt like she would be the one person who would hold me accountable because I could go to a village, make the photographs, come back to the city, do whatever I wanted to do, no matter how responsible I was trying to be there. But there was no one to actually tell me that, Hey, we don't like that photograph, you've taken off me. So that was a period where I was going through all of these questions, but then I realized that my mom, no matter how bad I made her look, she would love it because I was her son. So it kind of backfired. And what ended up happening in the process was, I remember the first time I showed the work, my voice would actually quiver and my body would kind of shake because it was very hard to kind of talk about it. 

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
But then I realized that nobody talked to me about photography. Everyone talked to me about having someone in their life, some parents, some uncle, aunt, friend, sibling who was going through something similar. And I think that really helped me to come to terms with my own life. So the healing actually happened outside the photography. It happened more terms of maybe other people got a point of entry to kind of talk about, to share something with me. It became more about other people telling me about their lives. And I think that listened to that made me feel not so alone. And that was the journey. Somewhere towards the end, I feel maybe I became too much of a photographer. So that was another dilemma that I had. I'm always going through these dilemmas and I'm always tied up and knots, but that was a very important inflection point, even in terms of realizing lots of things. 

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
Also about power behind the camera. Who's the person who's making the image accountability? Like today, I don't believe in the idea of ethics because the way ethics gets used, it's this codified set of rules which I haven't made, and there's this universal rule that kind of gets applied everywhere, whereas I choose more to think about whether I'll be able to take responsibility for what I'm doing because each context is different. So that experience of photographing my mom, having the book, which became the sort of a conversation with her to be able to say things to her that I could not really speak with what I had written and her kind of acknowledging it by telling me that I should do everything and that she feels proud and she loves the book. And in a way that was a conversation that we had without really having a conversation that we were meant to have. And in a way, that's why I feel glad about whatever I'm doing, whether it's making books or it becomes like this is an excuse to do something which I might not be able to do. 

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
So I think given the time and the fact that we'd like to give you the opportunity to sign some books, we should probably have other folks that have questions ask them at the table, which you'll be sitting at in a moment out there. But before we do move into the Miro Gallery, where Sara Rob will be signing books, there are two books available. One is his photo book, the Levee, which is his presentation of his own work. The other is the exhibition catalog for the show that's here. The book that was produced with Candor Hearts both are available. You've told me that yours is almost gone, so if you want this book, I'm just alerting you that this is your opportunity probably to get it right here. But before we all step outside for everything that you've shared with us tonight and over the past many months, I thank you. It's been an amazing experience. And will you all please join me? And thank you so much. 

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
Well, the Can Books is also by Nathaniel, so I think you should also get assigned by him. Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have conversations about the Art yourself. General admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking. The special exhibition on view right now is Women Breaking Boundaries. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and also join our Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is, oh Fron Musico by Backal. And as always, please rate and review us to help others find the show. I'm Russell Iig, and this has been Art Palace, produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.