Photos of Saurabh Narang’s India Unexplored Project to be showcased at 15th Horizon’s Jingest Environment Photo Festival
Photos of Saurabh Narang’s India Unexplored Project to be showcased at 15th Horizon’s Jingest Environment Photo Festival
The German municipality of Zingst, on the Baltic Sea, is hosting the 15th Horizons Zingst Environmental Photo Festival, starting on 20 May. Known for its sandy beaches, the city attracts photography and nature enthusiasts during this time of year by exhibiting photography exhibitions. Workshops and markets in the city’s galleries, outdoor spaces and on the Baltic Sea coastline. This year’s festival features Indian photographer Saurabh Narang, who is showcasing images from his India Unexplored project, attempting to portray how nature affects people and vice versa.
One of his prominent images is that of an elderly man, Ramnath Sharma, who feeds migratory birds at the Yamuna Ghat in Delhi. Saurabh took this picture in February 2017, observing how locals feed seagulls that migrate from Siberia to Delhi between October and March every year: “The locals believe that it is good to feed seagulls. Karma is.” Chhavi won Saurabh the Indian Photo Festival Portrait Award in 2018.
Saurabh studied finance and worked as an analyst in a multinational bank; His growing interest in photography inspired him to take a sabbatical; Eventually, he left the banking sector in 2018 to become a freelance photographer. Saurabh is now a multimedia story writer, taking up freelance and independent projects. After leaving the banking sector, he moved from Delhi to Sikkim in August 2018 and then to Germany in May 2020: “The India Unexplored Project, however, began in 2013. I traveled with the sole intention of understanding my country better and Started taking pictures.”
Photographer Saurabh Narang | photo credit: special arrangement
He traveled to 32 of the 36 Indian states and union territories and said, over the years photography helped him understand the complex relationship of humans with nature.
Most of the images displayed at the photo festival were taken from 2017 to 2020.
Given his vast collection of images from the project, Saurabh sought the help of science and documentary photographer Esther Horvath to select and curate the images for this exhibition: “Horvath was my mentor during the International Environmental Photography Lab, which lasted six months. The online consultation program was presented by the Native Agency in collaboration with Grune Berlin, Neue Schule für Photographie Berlin (the new school for photography) and the World Food Institute.
The images are varied – characteristic of indigenous tribes in the North East and Himachal Pradesh, people who live close to water bodies, mountains or deserts across the country.
A photograph of mahouts and elephants in Kaziranga National Park, Assam, tells the story of a mahout’s job that is passed down from father to son through families. At the Rann Utsav in Gujarat, Saurabh trained his lens on a folk singer seated on a colored mat, in contrast to the white sand. Saurabh tracks an astronomical event at the world’s highest village in the Spiti Valley of Himachal Pradesh and an aerial view of a boat against pristine waters in Shongpadeng, Meghalaya.
Saurabh explains: “What I have learned is that there is no one right way to live. We are all human beings with desires, joys and tragedies, and there is more to it than what divides us.”
(15th Horizons ZINGST Environmental Photo Festival is from May 20-29; India Unexplored will be on view at Gallery Hotel Stone, ZINGST from May 23)