"I will come with my full mind and soul"

The following are the words of a dear friend and photographer from India Shyamal Datta. He is returning soon to India after living in the States for a quarter century. In many ways Shyamal has something most of us never experience, two homes. Homes in the cultural sense, the sense of place. He has taken the opportunity to travel and explore this home most of those born here never feel inspired to roam. In many ways he is the American we wish all of us would be, proud of the place, both of its passion and its faults, and in love with the grand wildness our landscape still hold.

When in Kolkata recently for his wedding I reminded him of visual magic that lives and breaths on the streets he left all those years ago to do as millions do in America, discover a new home. The above image was one I discovered on those streets of his other home. Sharing it inspired this reply:

"I know. I understand where you are coming from.

I know you vouched this subject before in Kolkata. But I didn't respond to you. That's because when I am there I am so engrossed with family matters, friends, logistics and the shortage of time that I deliberately detach myself from photoshooting. Except of course when I have planned a side trip somewhere with the sole purpose of shooting.

There are millions of stories and plots and projects in my mind for when I am there. Its like when I am there I see a story and I tell myself - I will come back to you (the subject) later and I will come back to listen to your story and to capture your pixels and save them and keep them. So please forgive me for now. Because when I come to you I will come with my full mind and soul and my paintbrush or my pencil because to come to you now will trivialize you.

I have a story for ten or twelve year old kids working in shanty chai shops on the footwalks of the city - from dawn to dusk these kids work with no choice but to work. In the early mornings in the footwalks in the midst of smoke from their chai shops you can see their soiled faces serving chai to drive by truckers or taxi drivers. Something Cartier Bresson would love I guess

Just an example. So yes I see them but I try not "see" them for now. But I will"

We often see what lies before us, the challenge is to not let our eyes and ears and senses rest until we etch it indelibly with in us, then it adds texture and balance to the fabric of who we shall become, otherwise we're just so much flotsam, here and gone with the tides.

Tiger Trap

To answer several of you at once (thanks for asking) - the project in India I was working on is called Tiger Trap; so I've titled it for the moment. It is my first major overseas endeavor since returning to photography and writing full-time; it is a self-assignment. Like most of the projects I have worked on previously, it relies heavily on contacts I have developed over the years, and subjects or species, that I have a keen interest in seeing explored from a perspective I think has been neglected.

Tiger Trap follows project leader Dr. M Firoz Ahmed and his team of researchers in Kaziranga National Park, in Assam, India. The team is with the conservation organization Aaranyak, based in Guwahati.


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As is painfully the case in many of the endangered species stories I have researched and photographed, the cost and state of affairs become sad reminders of our planet and the life on it. Just over a century ago there were an estimated 45,000 tigers living wild in India's forests. By the time hunting was banned in 1972, their numbers were down to 2,000. Over the past century, the world's population of tigers has been reduced by 95% as a result of hunting and poaching for their body parts, which are used in traditional Asian medicine. As we celebrate The Year of the Tiger there are only around 3,200 tigers left on the planet.

A bit more about the project and updates will be posted on my website at http://gerryellis.net/tigertrap.html

Tiger Trap Photo: ARNYK_KNP_Female20 (courtesy Aaranyak - not to be reproduced without permission)