Missing

Ishan Tankha's photographs of a protest, a pogrom, and a pandemic

The above image of a protest at Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi is a powerful one but it is unusual in Ishan Tankha’s oeuvre where what is more common, or even characteristic, is an absence of ready emotion and open faces. In fact, I think of Tankha’s practice as the photography of absence.

Mainstream news is saturated with action, with information that it considers complete, even unquestionable. (This is also true of fake news.) Tankha’s photographs are about the incompleteness of images, and of information, and consequently, also of life. They give us an intimation of what is lacking in out world—and alert us to what is missing from the frame.

So, for instance, this image of women watching a funeral procession of two brothers murdered during the pogrom in north-east Delhi during early 2020:

Or this one taken at Delhi’s bus terminal, ISBT, during the pandemic when the government imposed a brutal lockdown:

There is so much stillness, such quiet, so much patience. As the viewer, you are invited to observe. Here is a figure in the Jadid Qabristan Ahle Islam cemetery:

I’m presenting these pictures from three zines (Still, Life 1, 2, 3, in an edition of 400) produced by Tankha. The images document a period in Delhi in 2020 that was marked by protests, a pogrom, and the pandemic.

In a conversation with the photographer, Tankha told me “photographs are as much about what the photographer keeps out of the frame as what they keep in. Sometimes the less obvious frames, quieter moments on the sidelines of bigger moments, while less dramatic and less likely to compete for prime real estate in print hold a lot more information. This 'secondary information' often finds relevance much after the moment has passed and certain patterns and connections become clear . This work is about focusing on those patterns, to look away from the storm as a way to give yourself space to think more deeply about the storm.”  

I feel that in Tankha’s photographs the objects appear like remnants in a ruined landscape; they seem to glow, because they are radioactive with meaning.

Look at the photograph above of a Muslim family’s shop that was gutted in the violence that followed the protests against a discriminatory citizenship law. No melodrama in the image, no semantic overload, no grief stricken faces in close-up. I feel that the distance or detachment adopted by the photographer is a delicate choice: it leaves the people with their pain, it gives them the dignity of silence, and turns even the scattered oranges into witnesses. They are our speaking subjects, their mute faces turned toward us.

Here, at the end, is the artist’s statement: