Thirty seven years after Raghu Rai became the first Indian member of Magnum Photos, an acclaimed international collective of photographers from around the world, another Indian, Sohrab Hura, has been selected. The photographer was elected as a member at Magnum’s annual meet in New York in the last week of June.
Magnum was co-founded by the iconic French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1947. Its archives, which gather the work of more than a hundred photographers, are a repository of celebrated images of life and events around the world.
Hura is currently a nominee member. After two years as a nominee, Hura could then become an associate member.
“I was struck by the raw energy and intimacy of Sohrab Hura’s vision,” said Jonas Bendiksen, a Magnum photographer from Norway. “It will be really interesting to follow him over the next years. It is healthy for the collective to bring on emerging photographers that are operating from places outside the traditional places like New York, Paris and London.”
Hura’s body of work includes images of life in troubled Indian villages from his early days as a photojournalist, to deeply personal portraits of his family and friends that are a part of his latest series.
“I guess my work will be able to live a little longer thanks to Magnum, and the pressure will save me from complacence,” said Hura in an email interview with Scroll.
The 32-year-old photographer, who was born in Chinsurah, West Bengal, has a Master’s in economics from the Delhi School of Economics. He became interested in photography in 2001, and when he finished college in 2005 he began working as a photojournalist, focusing on issues of employment and livelihood in rural India.
In a few years, however, Hura grew disenchanted. “Not many editors were interested in stories from rural India, and I felt photojournalism was moving away from a humanistic approach to a more ‘arty’ one,” he said. He began to feel that his work was not making a real difference to the lives of his subjects or his audience – “because I feel we as an audience have gone completely numb,” he says – and he gave up photojournalism altogether.
He began to focus, instead, on more personal photography. This eventually led to a two-part photo series that he calls Sweet Life. In 1999, when Hura was 17, his mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, a turn of events that has come to shape most of his life. The first chapter in the Sweet Life series, titled ‘Life is Elsewhere’, is about Hura’s relationship with his mother and his attempt to connect with his own life and the aspects of his world that he felt were disappearing.
The first chapter comprises photos from 2005 to 2011. The second part, titled ‘Look, It’s Getting Sunny Outside!!!’ has images from 2008 to 2014, a time when his mother’s mental health started to improve.
The Sweet Life series has not yet been exhibited in India, but Hura plans to publish them as a book.
While Hura admires the work of a range of Indian photographers, listing Dayanita Singh, Swapan Parekh, Richard Bartholomew, Raghu Rai and Raghubir Singh as among his favourites, he does not associate himself with a particular style.
“For the person that I am, if I straitjacket myself into one particular language, I will not be able to survive for too long,” said Hura, who is now working on a series of photos shot in Madhya Pradesh village. “It is important that photography is as malleable as medium as it can be for me.”
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Magnum was co-founded by the iconic French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1947. Its archives, which gather the work of more than a hundred photographers, are a repository of celebrated images of life and events around the world.
Hura is currently a nominee member. After two years as a nominee, Hura could then become an associate member.
“I was struck by the raw energy and intimacy of Sohrab Hura’s vision,” said Jonas Bendiksen, a Magnum photographer from Norway. “It will be really interesting to follow him over the next years. It is healthy for the collective to bring on emerging photographers that are operating from places outside the traditional places like New York, Paris and London.”
Hura’s body of work includes images of life in troubled Indian villages from his early days as a photojournalist, to deeply personal portraits of his family and friends that are a part of his latest series.
“I guess my work will be able to live a little longer thanks to Magnum, and the pressure will save me from complacence,” said Hura in an email interview with Scroll.
The 32-year-old photographer, who was born in Chinsurah, West Bengal, has a Master’s in economics from the Delhi School of Economics. He became interested in photography in 2001, and when he finished college in 2005 he began working as a photojournalist, focusing on issues of employment and livelihood in rural India.
In a few years, however, Hura grew disenchanted. “Not many editors were interested in stories from rural India, and I felt photojournalism was moving away from a humanistic approach to a more ‘arty’ one,” he said. He began to feel that his work was not making a real difference to the lives of his subjects or his audience – “because I feel we as an audience have gone completely numb,” he says – and he gave up photojournalism altogether.
He began to focus, instead, on more personal photography. This eventually led to a two-part photo series that he calls Sweet Life. In 1999, when Hura was 17, his mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, a turn of events that has come to shape most of his life. The first chapter in the Sweet Life series, titled ‘Life is Elsewhere’, is about Hura’s relationship with his mother and his attempt to connect with his own life and the aspects of his world that he felt were disappearing.
An image from Life is Elsewhere. Sohrab Hura/Magnum Photos
The first chapter comprises photos from 2005 to 2011. The second part, titled ‘Look, It’s Getting Sunny Outside!!!’ has images from 2008 to 2014, a time when his mother’s mental health started to improve.
The Sweet Life series has not yet been exhibited in India, but Hura plans to publish them as a book.
While Hura admires the work of a range of Indian photographers, listing Dayanita Singh, Swapan Parekh, Richard Bartholomew, Raghu Rai and Raghubir Singh as among his favourites, he does not associate himself with a particular style.
“For the person that I am, if I straitjacket myself into one particular language, I will not be able to survive for too long,” said Hura, who is now working on a series of photos shot in Madhya Pradesh village. “It is important that photography is as malleable as medium as it can be for me.”