Sipra Das’ book The Light Within : A Different Vision of Life opens up the world we rarely get a peek into.
Sipra Das was one of the first women news photographers to break into what was largely a men’s club in the eighties. I clearly remember Sipra in a sari and hair tied in a plaid rushing in and out of The Telegraph in Calcutta’s newsroom always seeming to be on a mission. We were young cubs too breaking into the world of journalism but what Sipra was doing was re-writing the rules of news photography in Calcutta. The photo department of Ananda Bazar Patrika had some big names and was all men and they guarded their domain against everything – imagine being challenged by a woman. One night on my way back from night shift I saw the iconic New Market on fire. I rushed home picked up my camera and spent the night shooting a historic moment when the more-than-a-hundred-years-old market was almost to be destroyed. The star photographer reached at sunrise. Being young and enthusiastic I told my editor of the exclusive shots I had taken as the only newsman on the scene. But the photos never saw the light of day – it was cleverly sabotaged.
Sipra Das was working against such odds when she was trying to make her mark but the gritty girl never said never and she proved herself with years of amazing work. Starting off on a borrowed Isolly II Sipra has shot for some of the biggest media houses in the country. Her determination within gave voice to a different vision of her art and craft. Her book on the blind gives us a completely different perspective into a dark world, turn the spotlight on something we have never stopped to look or think about.
The Light Within: A Different Vision of Life is the culmination of a 12-year-long project. Sipra’s photos also open our eyes to our own selves and surroundings. Sipra stumbled into documenting the perplexities, pleasures and pain of the lives of the blind in India.
One day, after staying at the hostel of the All India Confederation of the Blind, a teaching school, she toyed with the philosophical idea of “seeing from the heart”. The expression had been used by Jawahar Lal Kaul, the school’s then principal.
Das had not found any mirror on the hostel premises and was left with the question of “looking at oneself”. The blind can’t do that, but they have a vision decoded by their hearts, Kaul had told her. That triggered her interest in the subject.
Das’ pictures—symbolically all black and white—are an endearing mix of personal and political; her subjects are from different social classes all over India.
While the book has a few photographs of the well-to-do among the visually handicapped, like a beautician from Mumbai, Das has mostly trained her lens on the less empowered, turning them into unassailable heroes. From farmers to fishermen, feisty children, artists, performers, entrepreneurs, a midwife, doctors, lawyers, couples in love, even a coconut picker and a sightless photographer—her canvas is wide.
On the book cover is a smiling visually handicapped girl holding a diya. “Who says blindness is about darkness?” Sipra asks. A question her photographs answer rather well.