INTRODUCTION
I traveled to India in February 1977 with Carl Lawrence, international program director, Far East Broadcasting Company. Over the course of 16 days we visited New Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, and Calcutta (plus my side trip to the Taj Mahal). We were there to lead communication workshops for FEBC's local programming staff. I had joined FEBC in 1975 as program manager for its English language station, JOFF, on Okinawa. Later, from 1978-1980, I developed and managed programming on Saipan for FEBC's newest station, KSAI.
Between meetings and official business, I walked the streets and made photographs with two Nikons banging together around my neck (Kodachrome in one and Tri-X in the other), and a couple of new lenses I had just purchased at the Grand Co. in Hong Kong. Those few days were an introduction to what I would later understand to be street photography. I had experience as a news photographer, but back then I probably would not have recognized names like Robert Frank, Walker Evans, or Berenice Abbott.
India was in political turmoil. Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in 1975, suspending elections, freedom of the press, and civil liberties. Her son led a controversial mass vasectomy program. She jailed many political opponents. (On the train to the Taj Mahal, I sat next to the wife of one, Piloo Mody. Ironically, she was from Oakland, Calif., and had met him at U.C. Berkeley. He was later released and served in parliament.) Gandhi had called for national elections in March. So, just weeks after we left she lost her parliament seat to Morarji Desai, of the dissenting Janata Party, who would become the new Prime Minister.
Many of the images selected for this book were ones that I had barely noticed when the film was originally processed. Additionally, my own aesthetic idea of an effective photograph is different today than last year, let alone 40 years ago. Working with original B&W negatives and color transparencies (instead of RAW digital files) has been a throw back to the joy that came with dark room processing or waiting for slides to be returned from a Kodak lab. My Bombay journal entry noted: "Black and white is essential to capturing the emotion of joyless people, the starkness of half-clothed figures, but color preserves faded human dignity -- a blue ribbon tied in a tangle of black hair, a spot of color bringing (a destitute) child to life."
India was unlike anyplace I had seen or imagined. Another journal entry: "Unlike New Delhi, there are no sidewalks in Bombay. Trucks move continuously in both directions, spewing black, smelly smoke. The streets are a blur of cars, bicycles, motor scooters, pedestrians, and carts pulled by cows or horses. People are everywhere, dressed in sarees and dhotis, most barefooted; bare-chested young and old men; poor mothers with babies. Children line the sidewalk tapping at your knee and begging, 'Please, sir. Please, sir.' Adults ask for 'financial assistance.' Sleeping bodies are wrapped in blankets tucked in niches and alcoves of buildings or on the open sidewalk. Small bonfires dot the street with persons gathered around. Nearby are lean-to tent homes, decrepit cement huts, and scrap sheet metal houses packed together. Gutters and streets are full of dirt and garbage, a distinct odor fills the cab: exhaust and dirt, filth and excrement."
In a Calcutta note, I made reference to Rudyard Kipling's short story, The City of Dreadful Night when I wrote: "Where ghosts are living and the living are ghosts." A phrase that might be a quote or my own commentary. I added that it was "a city of poverty, compressed, crippled, maimed sidewalk dwellers."
"It is not easy to photograph India," I wrote. I imagined "dozens of pairs of eyes with sullen glares, limply and somewhat menacingly scrutinizing my camera and clean clothes, and wondering why someone would pay attention to what is so unlovely."
I was unable to focus on some scenes: "I've been trying to take a lot of pictures, but there is an inner resistance to lifting a camera to my eyes, focusing on a mother and child huddled in the corner of a sidewalk or under a tree, and then walking on. I felt self-conscious with an obtrusive zoom lens. It has taken time to feel comfortable pointing it at people on the street, while being followed by beggars carrying their babies and touching me."
Did I really get comfortable? I am not sure that I did. Even today I am not always at ease making photographs in homeless areas or San Francisco's Tenderloin district. However, what I began to learn in India -- and what makes street photography possible for me today -- was the importance of seeing who is in front of the lens, of engaging, talking with people and not thinking of them as only subjects. Larry Fink put this beautifully, "But for me, photography has always been a tool rather than an end in itself, a way of attempting to understand what it means to feel kinship with another -- what, I think, could be called empathy."
Daniel Danzig, February 2024
