One kid will choose a location where they want to be photographed and the rest will line up behind up,  making this a very instant and playful studio photo session.

In the beginning I used to find this distracting, and tried to avoid doing it but it seems that looking at my archive, I have been manipulated more than once.  I guess in the end, I was happy to be influenced by a six year old who only wanted to be photographed.

And no matter how young or old I look or which part of India I am in, invariably I get called Uncle when the kids want to get my attention…

Copyright Brijesh Patel : Children in a village in North India

Robert Cornelius wrote this short but evocative inscription on the back of his own self-portrait.  This self-portrait is the first photographic image of human ever produced.

The quarter plate daguerreotype was taken at the back of his father’s gas lamp business in Philadelphia in October or November 1839.

I started making artists’ books about two years ago.  At the time I was working on a project inspired by work and words of Gandhi and hence I strongly wanted to create a book where mechanical and chemical intervention would be minimal.  For this reason I turned to Keith Smith’s work in non-adhesive binding.

Keith is a master artists’ bookmaker and his five volumes are teaching me something new and important every time I open them.  I have self-taught myself Coptic binding from his books.

In this binding technique, each page is stitched to the book block as an individual sheet and each page has its own hinge that allows it to remain independent from other pages hence there is no pull or push effect and it also means that it opens completely flat. For a photographer working especially in landscapes this is the ultimate goal in making a book.

Copyright Brijesh Patel : Coptic binding stitch for “Salt” Land artists’ book.

Some startling facts that came out were regarding rural India and the agricultural society that still employs 60% of the population but only now accounts for 17% of GDP.  This he fluidly relates to the use and importance of “land” in India.

Land in India has symbolic, social and cultural notions attached to it that I have to some extent been exploring in my own work, Salt / Land & People project.

Professor Gupta linked many of the unanswered questions with fluidity and presented the results of his research that will allow me to explore further through photography my own investigations into land and India.

Copyright Brijesh Patel : Rural Bengal from a train, B&W, Iford 400.

Shot on medium format, the images are unusual, in that they have a feeling of being discovered and not shot through a process of over planning or over composition.

For me, the images that are of stand out quality are the more abstract in nature, where the files form a world of their own, some piled so high that they touch the ceiling and form walls around the clerks and officers who have their desks and chairs in the same room.

The portraits are too composed, too clean and cleaver, and hence they loose their magic.  There are however couple of exceptions to this, and once again they work because the human form is intertwined with the structures of the document towers and it is only through hard stare that you see a forehead and eyes peering though the files.

The exhibition is housed in the new Inigo Rooms at the Kings College London and supported by the India Institute.

All the cloth in the book is khadi (hand-spun cotton), commissioned by me from the great grandchildren of Ramgidada and his wife Gangben who in 1918 taught Gandhi to weave on his return from South Africa.  Ramgidada established a weaving center at Sabarmati ashram in Ahmedabad on the request of Gandhi who regarded weaving khadi as a way of life.

The project was created on a Wista 4×5.  This had the added advantage that in the long time it took to set up the shot, the ubiquitous crowds that would normally gather around the photo session would get bored and disappear, leaving me to think, plan and make the image.

Jostein took me out on a hunt yesterday evening.  When I got to his house, he immediately fished out of his extensive hunting wardrobe appropriate clothes to keep me warm and dry.  I kind of protested at being told to wear waterproofs that were three sizes too big.  But it was a silly thing to do in hindsight.

We walked across the fields to one of his favorite hunting spots and started a stakeout.  During our walk Jostein explained to me the nature of the hunt, animal behaviour and how the night would proceed.   He also told me in detail his family’s connection with hunting, with the surrounding nature and what it meant for him.  There were a lot of simple truths in what he had to say and it was difficult for me to disagree.

The moment we settled down in our hideout, it began to rain.  We sat on the spot for two and a half hours, motion less, barely breathing.  Jostein had instructed me on certain rules, the most important being no sudden movements and if possible no movements at all.  He was looking out on the right; I was to keep an eye out on an open patch of field grass to the left.  So we waited, and the darkness came, the rain continued and the temperature began to fall.

The light was deep blue/grey, the constant fall of the rain was kind of soothing and there was no breeze.  It was getting dark rapidly and there was no sign of deer.

After about two hours Jostein spotted a small herd but they were too far and it was too dark.  We watched them for about half an hour, and made a decision to head back home.   This was the perfect decision as far as I was concerned.  Even though I had agreed to go on a hunt and to stay for the slaughter and the clean up, I was not prepared to see an animal die so that I could make a few interesting pictures.  But that night I experienced something quite special.

Jostein is the kind of a person who kills because he has a deep connection with nature and the animals around him.  He is acutely aware of his actions.  He is not a trophy hunter.

The man’s wife took us to one side and started chatting to us in Norwegian.  Within five seconds we realised that she did not understand English.  This however did not stop her flow of softly spoken chitchat.  It also became obvious that the man had no interest in dealing with the foreigners who were about to trespass through private land.   But she seemed experienced in dealing with such issues and from what we gathered, there were reference to dirty shoes, mud, grass, and photographers in what she was saying.  In the end she walked us to a little wooden gate and with a quick demonstration on how to lock the gate, she sent up off on our way with a little wave and a nod.

It is the fleshy human presence that I had been longing for in my images.