In 2011 and 2013 Nicolaus Schmidt visited India - in cooperation with the terre des hommes India team and various NGOs (see below). The second trip had the explicit goal to produce an exhibition and a book about women in India. The book INDIA WOMENwas published in 2014 and in January 2015 the India International Centre in New Delhi presented the first exhibition. This was followed by others in Germany.
The exhibition in the IIC had a great resonance in the Indian press, there were larger articles among other things in the Indian Express, The Hindu, or in the South Indian newspaper Mathrubhumi Daily: ÜBERSICHT
Portraits
Women – cities & rural areas
collages
The following is a longer text on Nicolaus Schmidt's photographs in the exhibition "Stadt Land Flucht" (City Land Escape) in the Hofgartensaal of the Residenz Kempten in 2017..
INDIA WOMEN is the title of the book by the Berlin photographer Nicolaus Schmidt and the young Indian journalist Priyanka Dubey. The book as well as the accompanying exhibition concentrate on the everyday life of Indian women in the villages as well as in the slums of the megacities. India has 1.3 billion inhabitants. Publishing a book about women in India inevitably means that it has to focus on essential aspects. In India, two thirds of the population still live below the poverty line by international standards, and two thirds still live in rural areas, although there is massive migration from rural regions to megacities in particular. Therefore, the focus of the exhibition project and the book on the poorer majority of the population as well as on life in the countryside is logical.
The exhibition in Delhi 2015 was opened by the German ambassador, Michael Steiner.
Gleichzeitig ist Indien ein Land, das in die Hochtechnologie drängt und Anschluss an eine Entwicklung wie in China finden möchte. Nicolaus Schmidt zeigt deshalb in seinen Fotografien als Hintergrund des Lebens der Frauen und Mädchen auch diese Moderne, die sich in Form von Büropalästen und von riesigen Werbetafeln bildhaft manifestiert.
At the same time, India is a country that is pushing into high technology and wants to catch up with a development like China. For this reason, Nicolaus Schmidt's photographs also show this modernity as the background to the lives of women and girls, which manifests itself pictorially in the form of office palaces and huge billboards.
The idea for this photo project arose in 2010, when the photographer met the coordinator of terre des hommes for India, George Chirappurathu, again after two decades. Both knew each other from the time when Nicolaus Schmidt, chairman of terre des hommes Germany in the 1980s, was involved in the discussion of a reorientation of project work in India. In 2011, the first trip through India took place, which began with a visit to rural aid projects in Maharashtra. The focus was not yet clear, but after only a few days of travel with Ingrid Mendonca, the current coordinator in India, the discussions revolved around the still difficult position of women in Indian society. The abortion of female fetuses in India had already been a topic in the 1980s about which terre des hommes had provided information.
Nicolaus Schmidt was, as he says, astonished and horrified that the number of abortions has even increased until today, despite all laws and prohibitions. Accordingly, there are only 940 women per 1000 men in India today, and in some states the disproportion is much greater. This practice is justified by the high dowry costs and the fact that all investments in a daughter later benefit the in-laws. Behind this is a great disregard for female people. India is a deeply patriarchal society.
The decision to concentrate the photo project on women and girls was therefore made quickly and determined the selection of the locations and projects that the photographer visited on the second longer trip in 2013. Both trips led him through large parts of central and northern India, from West Bengal to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. For reasons of time and money, South Indian states such as Tamil Nadu or Kerala could not be visited.
How can, how should a photographer who comes from a western culture take photographs in India? India is colorful, diverse, original, picturesque, grandiose, and at the same time deterrent to the misery of uprooted families who sleep outdoors under concrete bridges in the cities. Many illustrated books about India show the picturesque, the original, focusing on the tourist's gaze and ignoring the difficulties of daily life for many people. Others also rely on the abstraction of black and white with modern photographic technology and ignore every screamingly colorful billboard, every car, every modern building. In an opulent illustrated book from 2008, for example, one has the feeling of being catapulted back to India in the 1940s. Images of begging people fit seamlessly into this picture of India as photogenic misery.
Nicolaus Schmidt has gone another way. He photographs women and girls in their surroundings, in their everyday lives so directly that one has the impression that the photographer was there as an invisible cameraman without disturbing this everyday life. Women from a Dalit village community (Dalits used to be called "untouchables") in Uttar Pradesh we see a group of women on their way to field work from a perspective that tells us that we are travelling with them as part of the group. In another scene in this village, we are part of a working process in which two women cut hard grass for their pets with an ancient machine. In the city of Gwalior in northern India, a photograph takes us to a morning event in which a group of girls are busily walking around in search of small metal parts that will later be sold to scrap metal dealers.
This immediacy resembles a cinematic camera work. In the film, actors act and know that the camera is moved close around them in search of the best viewing angle. In the streets and villages of India, the girls and women simply went about their daily work and didn't seem to mind that Nicolaus Schmidt was among them, photographing them from the side, from the front, even from below. The result was pictures that let us viewers participate in the most diverse situations in this everyday life, in which photography does not gloss over anything, but also does not artificially dramatize anything. How is this possible? Why didn't the women let themselves be disturbed by the man from a western country whom they had only recently met?
When asked about his working methods, the photographer repeatedly points out the need to build up a feeling of trust among the people he wants to photograph. In the Dalitdorf community, this was built up by the fact that everyone, the women and the photographer (and an interpreter), first sat down in a circle and imagined how many children they had, how many goats, what one (the photographer) intended with his photographs. Listening is important, a careful approach, from a certain point also a laugh, an irony of the man from the West about himself, among the women who are the mistresses of the events here. In the Dalit village this was easy, at some point the sari veils were raised as a sign of trust, there was enough time to get to know each other.
In the case of the metal-seeking girls or domestic workers who met in a public park in New Delhi during their short lunch break, the conditions were different. Nicolaus Schmidt reports that he had only a few minutes each to introduce himself to an Indian companion and to report on his concern: that he was photographing to make a book about the life of the simple women of India and that he wanted to show the pictures in the capital Delhi. In both cases it has obviously worked. The domestic workers, all of whom had come to Delhi as migrants from poor Indian federal seeds such as Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, lost their initial shyness within just under half an hour, had themselves portrayed as thoroughly self-confident women and finally, in conversation with their children, photographed in such a way that the photographer seemed forgotten.
Particularly in the book INDIA WOMEN, these photographs contrast with a documentation of the bursting into modernity. Monumental office buildings announce a "MEGA VISION" on an advertising sign in front, BLACKROCK INDIA advertises an "INDIA T.I.G.E.R FUND", an investment fund - India as the next gigantic tiger state. On the other hand, there are photographs of the garbage ubiquitous in India's streets, which is simply dumped on the street and early in the morning children, "rag pickers", look for usable material.
The photographer's approach produces images that are more than mere images of the women photographed. Connections between individuals and social structures become clear.
The problems of Indian women - as everywhere in the world - result primarily from the traditional behaviour of men. Nicolaus Schmidt shows surprisingly self-confident women who look after their families, their children, who earn their own income by leasing land with micro-credits and farming it. But he also shows how the balance of power between the sexes manifests itself in everyday life. A young taxi driver at the wheel of her car in Delhi is being driven by a passing motorcyclist. Even in the capital Delhi, a simple woman driving a taxi is something men can't imagine. Savita, the young woman's name, has to endure these glances all day long in traffic, or when she waits in front of an international hotel for guests. She stares stubbornly straight ahead, endures being gawked at because she has fought for a new life that she does not want to give up despite the reaction of the man's world. She is part of a cooperative that actually wanted to be a normal taxi company, only with women at the wheel. When many male passengers did not know how to behave and became assaulted, they did not stop the business as a reaction, no, they changed the business policy. They now only drive families and women, "Cabs for women by women".
In another photograph, a woman works bent over in road construction, cleaning a pothole to be filled with tar. Three young men drive past her on a motorcycle, laughing and having a good time. This photo, taken in Rajasthan, is symptomatic. When you drive over the villages, men sit in all the tea houses along the way, drink their tea, talk, have a lot of time. Meanwhile women are working in their saris in the fields, picking cotton, working in road construction and carrying heavy loads, as other photos show. With this photo Nicolaus Schmidt has succeeded in creating a picture of a social state, "Women are working, boys just have fun.
The work that the women do is exhausting. Many photographs in the brochures of the western aid organization show women in their saris picking tea or on a rice field. In these photos one sees women in colourful robes in an intact agricultural landscape, nothing of the heaviness of the work is conveyed. Nicolaus Schmidt has avoided this photo trap by, as he says, doing hard work himself. The women in his photographs were to be given faces, he didn't want to reduce them to the view of a back in a colorful sari. To achieve this, he followed the women for hours, squatted down, photographed them from the height of the blades of grass.
His photographs also show the colourful robes, but the women have been given a face. In a photograph from Rajasthan, the profile of a woman behind a gauze-like head veil determines the picture, while a second woman works in the dust of the whirled field in the background. Laali, the agricultural worker in the background, straightens up on another photo, stretches her back, grasps her head, clearly exhausted, with her right hand, the sickle holding her in her left hand, laid down on her shoulder. This photo shows the effort behind the colorful views of the women in their colorful saris. Life, especially for women without land in the countryside, is hard.
An impressive photo series deals with the sexual harassment against which women and girls increasingly resist. A film poster from Delhi forms the beginning: Three young Indian women draw attention to themselves on this poster through their sexually charged poses. Seduction and lust, the female body is staged as an object of male desire. This basic component of a society dominated by men is confronted with a photo of another poster in which a wall painting protests against "Violance against Women". This invitation to protest becomes an action in the picture in between. In a collage, the photographer combines a film still from an old Bollywood film with a street theatre scene in which girls appear in a slum against sexual harassment. The series concludes with two portraits of the girls from the theatre group. They look at the viewer directly, seriously and with a penetrating gaze. "Because I Am A Girl" is written on the T-shirt of one of the girls.
Nicolaus Schmidt works with image sequences in both the book and the exhibition. The hanging of his exhibition is strictly planned, picture series such as those on violence against women must be presented in context. Here, too, there is a reference to a cinematic working method. While his photography already had a similarity with direct camera work in the respective situation, there is now a parallel to the editing of a film. The photographs from the villages as well as from the cities have their special effect and statements as a presentation in a sequence of pictures. cond woman works in the dust of the whirled field in the background. Laali, the agricultural worker in the background, straightens up on another photo, stretches her back, grasps her head, clearly exhausted, with her right hand, the sickle holding her in her left hand, laid down on her shoulder. This photo shows the effort behind the colorful views of the women in their colorful saris. Life, especially for women without land in the countryside, is hard.
An impressive photo series deals with the sexual harassment against which women and girls increasingly resist. A film poster from Delhi forms the beginning: Three young Indian women draw attention to themselves on this poster through their sexually charged poses. Seduction and lust, the female body is staged as an object of male desire. This basic component of a society dominated by men is confronted with a photo of another poster in which a wall painting protests against "Violance against Women". This invitation to protest becomes an action in the picture in between. In a collage, the photographer combines a film still from an old Bollywood film with a street theatre scene in which girls appear in a slum against sexual harassment. The series concludes with two portraits of the girls from the theatre group. They look at the viewer directly, seriously and with a penetrating gaze. "Because I Am A Girl" is written on the T-shirt of one of the girls.
Nicolaus Schmidt works with image sequences in both the book and the exhibition. The hanging of his exhibition is strictly planned, picture series such as those on violence against women must be presented in context. Here, too, there is a reference to a cinematic working method. While his photography already had a similarity with direct camera work in the respective situation, there is now a parallel to the editing of a film. The photographs from the villages as well as from the cities have their special effect and statements as a presentation in a sequence of pictures.
The portraits Nicolaus Schmidt takes up in situ, out of his hand and with the light available in each case, are an important element even in earlier photographic projects. According to his statement, two things are important. In the situation, he selects a suitable background in front of which a suitable light should also be present. The photographing takes place quickly, in a few minutes, only with a small number of pictures. He wants the people to simply present themselves as they are and not think long about how they want to appear or arrange themselves. A few words from the photographer to the woman to be portrayed are enough to create impressive portraits in which the women look directly at the viewer, mostly self-confident, sometimes somewhat uncertain. In one case, the gaze is challenging, almost mocking. This photograph of Urmila Gorakh chewing a stick to clean her teeth was chosen by the photographer as the cover of his book. "When we began the round of talks in the Dalit village of Hanumanganj, all the women had pulled their saris deep over their faces in the presence of the photographer from a distant country. In the course of the conversation Urmila was the first to stand up and push the sari backwards. The portrait shows her personality, just as I experienced her later in New Delhi at the opening of the exhibition in the presence of the German ambassador. She had come from her village to a big city for the first time and then chatted with the ambassador as a matter of course. In the photo she looks great because of her charisma. In fact, she is a petite, very small woman, but full of self-confidence. The photograph shows her essence.
The Dalit community, about 150 km away from the holy city of Varanasi, is one of the many landless families who try to find a livelihood in the countryside, where land is leased, e.g. to grow vegetables for sale. The women were supported by micro-credits (promoted by terre des hommes). In the meantime Urmila has repaid her loan, is involved in the local council (Panchyat) and helps to ensure that women here do not have to migrate to the big cities, where they try to build a new life under miserable circumstances.
At the beginning of 2015, Nicolaus Schmidt showed his photographs in one of the most important exhibition venues in New Delhi, the India International Centre. The reaction in the Indian press was very positive, in many big and important newspapers articles appeared, which emphasized above all that with all problems for Indian women, the photographer has also met and photographed very active women, who do not accept their situation.
At the beginning of 2015, Nicolaus Schmidt showed his photographs in one of the most important exhibition venues in New Delhi, the India International Centre. The reaction in the Indian press was very positive, in many big and important newspapers articles appeared, which emphasized above all that with all the problems for Indian women, the photographer has also met and photographed very active women, who do not accept their situation.
text from the program booklet of the exhibition "Stadt Land Flucht", ed. Kulturamt Kempten, 2017
Author: Christoph Radke
GALERIEKONTAKT: Galerie Schmalfuss Berlin:
art(et)galerie-schmalfuss.de