Photographer Palani Kumar is aware of the unforgiving nature of the camera lens. It surveys beauty and atrocities alike—steadily, without a blink until the shutter interrupts its scrutiny. On the fringes of towns and beyond barren landscapes across Tamil Nadu and pockets of Odisha and Karnataka, the 32-year-old storyteller of pictures trudges along, documenting the unchanged plight of Dalit communities—social ostracism, caste and birth stigma, and more. His photo essay exhibited at the Vaanam Art Festival in Chennai is a metaphor for what cannot rise up: the worn-out sandals of workers. “I focused only on the slippers to make people aware about an upper caste diktat to restrain Dalits from wearing footwear in several rural areas in India,” he says.
The Vaanam Art Festival is the brainchild of filmmaker Pa Ranjith, founder of the Neelam Cultural Centre. This time, 35 photographers from all across the country came together to mark Dalit History Month (April). The third edition of the event sewed together, as always, different forms of art, from theatre to films and literature, to push Dalit stories into the spotlight. Ranjith says, “The African-Americans rebelled against the atrocities they faced through various ways, incorporating it into their art, culture and even lifestyle. The Vaanam Art Festival is akin to such efforts." Photographer and art curator Jaisingh Nageswaran gives enthusiasts a walkthrough along the rows of snapshots and portraits detailing the purpose of every picture and the underlying theme.
“Each artwork conveys a moment or episode of personal exploration or social ills. Unlike motion pictures, photographs crunch the essence of a narrative into a single moment. A camera is only an object; the eyes behind it have the potential to bring meaning… and change,” says Nageswaran.
Focusing on the marginal communities, the exhibition also trains its lens on transgenders, and the harrowing tales of police brutality and official apathy they recount. Nageswaran points to the flurry of conceptual studio photographs around the subdued dreams of transgenders. For instance, Benny, an elderly trans-man, had for years dreamed of taking a stroll on the Pattaya beach in Thailand. Imagination superimposed itself on reality for a brief moment; first Nageswaran recreated the beach on a canvas placed in his studio and asked Benny to gaze at the horizon line while he transferred the decisive moment of wistfulness into his camera.
All images at the festival bear testimony to both personal and social struggles of the dispossessed. Steering clear of conventional portrait and landscape formats, the photographers devised a conceptual oeuvre of storytelling to chronicle the hardships of the socially abandoned. For instance, the image of a narrow dirt road that runs through vegetation towards a settlement in Veeraloor in Tiruvannamalai district. In January 2022, it became a road to conflict of conscience. A clash erupted after the upper castes stopped a funeral procession of Arunthatiyars.
The police had to step in. The countless stories of caste oppression over the centuries have found a form and identity. An image never lies.