Assam Albums

On his route lay one burned-down village after another,with an occasional CRPF personnel telling him,“Yahan kuchh nahi hai (There’s nothing here).” He saw razed structures,remnants of what probably had been a place of worship or someone’s concrete house,standing out like fresh wounds in the still,tropical weather. “The atmosphere was very tense and there was an uneasy calm,” says Singh.

Covering the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District areas of Kokrajhar,Dhubri and Chirang,Singh took on the battered lands with his camera for a month and followed it up with another stint in January this year,at the several relief camps dotting the districts.

As his photographs of these visits,spread across 15 matt prints in black and white,go up on display at Les Rencontres d’Arles — a prominent international photography festival in Arles,Paris — Singh says,almost in frustration,“What’s crazy is that people don’t know that there’s a place called Kokrajhar. That was exactly the reason for the photographs taken.”

At the Les Rencontres d’Arles,Singh beat 12 photographers from across the world to win The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for Documentary Photography & Film grant,selected by a prestigious jury that includes Lucien Clergue,founder of Les Rencontres d’Arles; and Christian Caujolle,founder of Agency and Gallery VU in France and Founder and Arts Director of Photo Phnom Penh festival,among others.

Singh’s series,titled “Ethnic Unrest,Western Assam – The Aftermath”,sketches a disturbing yet poignant state of Assam after it witnessed ethnic violence between the Bodos (considered the original inhabitants of the area) and migrant Bengali Muslim populations in July 2012.

Singh,a native of Rohtak,Haryana,started with journalistic aspirations. But he was clear about one thing: “ That I wouldn’t sit in an office.” After honing his skills in photography between 2000 and 2004,Singh was awarded a fellowship by National Foundation for India in 2006,sending him to the Northeast. “Forget about national coverage,the Northeast doesn’t even get local attention. I would equate this episode to the Uttarakhand tragedy,yet there’s no one to cover it,” says Singh,who started photographing the Northeast because of its low coverage.

In Assam,his photographs involve several portraits,mostly of women and children,of their immune,weather-beaten faces,along with the war-torn landscapes. “Once I started to shoot,I was direct and didn’t play any tricks. These photographs are simple and straight,” says Singh.

Several stories came along his way— from a respected professor who was killed right outside his house,sparking violence in the area,to a burned-down place of worship about 15 miles from Kokrajhar,the site of a fierce overnight battle where even the police force was said to hesitate to intervene.

The photographs will be displayed in Paris till the end of this month,but a show in India is in the works.