I have been an admirer of Deep Ghosh’s photographs on Instagram for some time now, and you may recognize him as one of the participants in our monthly theme posts.  His photographs of life in and around India capture the beauty of life on the streets of the city, juxtaposed with the starkness of poverty and decay.  His images are always perfectly composed, with lines and angles that captivate.  His street portraits are compassionate and real, often with a touch of humor or irony.   I contacted him recently and asked if he would be a guest here, and he graciously agreed.  Here, then, is his world.

Photographs by Deep Ghosh
Written and curated by Kamalini Mukherjee

Tomorrow marks seventy years of independence for India from colonial rule. Seventy years of freedom. It is a remarkable feat, to claim that we are somehow ‘independent’. So I walk around and I look for people, things and places that can provide me with some evidence for this abstract concept of freedom. What do we have now that we thought we didn’t before? Does freedom mean a life of obliviousness to what imprisons us… cages without bars, invisible boxes wrapped in bubbles of temporary meaning…

Seventy years of freedom preceded by two hundred years of servitude. I walk around, not looking for meaning, but to find a mooring for our collective expression of independence from this history of oppression.

But as I walk through the dilemma, I see more ways in which we are caged, controlled and categorised, not by others but ourselves. I see people paddling the dirt around their lives, I see old wrinkled buildings scrambling to stand tall against the burgeoning urban growth, I see trees covered in soot and sweat of the everyday struggles, and I see them change a little every time I look carefully.

I don’t know what freedom means, but as long as I can wonder, I suppose it will elude concreteness.

Deep was born and brought up in Kolkata, India, and now lives there with his wife and boxer boy. He is a musician and member of the band The Fossils, and likes documenting his life and experiences through photography. He also enjoy walks with his boy, and collecting cactii. He has been nominated for and won numerous photography awards, including a 2016 Hipstography award.  You can see more of his work on Instagram.

Many thanks to Deep and Kamalini for sharing these moving images and words with us.

Just a reminder that the August theme is STREET PHOTOGRAPHY.  Share your images with us on Instagram and tag them #viewsfindersio and #streetphotography by August 29th for a chance to be featured in our September 1st theme post.

See you then.

–lucy