In Transit
August 2010
#Freedom , 1491 Views
In Transit

Photographs: Bharat Sikka

In the stretches between fantastical billboards is where the real India lies.

The images in this series suggest a different kind of India, an India in the cavernous space between the advertiser’s billboard and the documentarian’s poverty. These images do not proffer any glib or emotional messages. There is nothing here which is proud, boastful, exploitative or shameful. Everything is shot as it is. Even with the photographer’s inevitable framing there is the constant feeling that everything here has merely been stumbled upon by an attentive eye. And yet the India of these images is one that is rarely noticed or represented; it is the India in between the show, private and resting. These images may be like this because they have nothing to sell. Or, more precisely, because the things which they seem to be selling are not in the business of being sold.