He is a travelling shooter with a roving eye at his creative beck and call. He hovers around places to nab vignettes of human interest subjects and a string of moving sagas, hitherto unscripted.
The 41-year-old Indian snapper Parth Sanyal charts out the unexplored horizons to set his class apart with a different tale to tell on life. Armed with an extensive watch-dogging experience over the last 18 years, Sanyal has covered a major part of South Asia for various Indian mainline dailies and global wire services till date. His stint in photojournalism saw him winning accolades from all over.
A mother crossing the choppy Bagmati river, flowing through Bihar with her 15-day-old baby in a tiny boat; a kadaiwallah (men with large cauldrons, known as gold scavengers as they collect dust to filter out precious yellow metal) from Kolkata, flashing his gold-plated tooth with a timid ear-to-ear grin; a close-knitted tribal community performing quaint rituals on hill slopes; women boxers warming up before a tough combat; the shadow of a music band’s performance falling as a silhouetted figure across the backstage tarpaulin; a deluge of foamy waves discharged from hot-springs breaking on the boulder rocks and much more adorn the rich, illustrious oeuvre of this adventure-hungry lensman. “I have encountered a melange of experiences… all teasingly saucy, precariously peppery-hot, sweetly thrilling, delightfully interesting, strange yet savoury, I don’t know how else to put it. Some were smooth-sailing, some were confrontational, some awesomely stunning, some really nerve-racking, while some pleasant. But overall, it has been a fascinating journey…I have everything recorded in my mental diary and my album of clicked pictures only keep refreshing those fond memories from time to time,” says the shutterbug with a vision.
Recently, a “woman and child” centric exhibition to celebrate International Mother’s Day, was showcased in Kolkata where Sanyal’s collage of images were displayed. His work focused on the front-line health workers dispensing out community services in and around the Purulia and Bankura districts of West Bengal. “It was a commissioned project from the NGO ‘Save the Children’s stable’. And I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. It was challenging…yet creatively satisfying,” he shares, adding, “When people approach me to embark on an endeavour that is worth my salt, I make sure to go the whole hog without batting an eyelid. It gives you an edge and an impetus to prove your mettle once more in the dicey game.”
The exhibition displayed an array of 24 black and white photographs infused with some sporadic coloured snapshots. “See, the black and white chromes, plus the shades of grey always create a strong, heavy impact on the viewers’ minds. It spells forth a magic of its own, without much effort,” he says. Though devoid of that stark iridescence of varied hues, Sanyal’s pictures still manage to bear a spark of their own. The painstakingly amassed collection was created in November 2011.
Another work on similar lines, is currently in progress. “I was asked to set foot on the soil of our neighbouring state Bihar this April, and procure some footage of the uncountable mothers and their wards, desperately coping with the indigent health conditions prevalent over there. The area lacks any organised system to address the health issues...I was shocked to watch a mother being released hardly within two hours of her delivery and left to fend for herself and her new born with absolutely no medical attention. It was unarguably a difficult subject for me, which I swore to pull off somehow. I felt that even my camera has the power to emotively react to such horrid, stimulating sights,” he says.
Apart from taking pictures of underprivileged children, the other difficulty that Sanyal witnessed “was the incessantly undulated terrain”. “I constantly waded through the numerous muddy tracks, hot sands, marshy river-beds along my shooting course. But that’s what a realistic snapper gets as sops alongside his monthly salary. Don’t make a mistake of maligning photography as a cushy job, my friend,” he says in lighter vein.
Standing on the threshold of opening up a photography school for avid aspirants in Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi shortly, Sanyal confides that he has been nursing this ambition for long. The institute will be known as Udaan School of Photographers. “If you have a creative eye, it can further be nurtured, developed and honed to a flawless perfection…what is most indispensable is one’s ardent passion, which is latently smouldering inside. That needs to be fast ignited to lead one thing to another. So am hell-bent on fanning that dormant fire to spread it wildly in the forest of creativity,” he avows, before winding up.