India

Photographs from a recent trip overland from the UK to Istanbul via France, Switzerland, Italy, a ferry down the Adriatic, and Greece; then around southern India down the coast from Mumbai to Kerala, inland to Mysore, the Nilgiris, Hyderabad and Bangalore, up to Bijapur, Pune, and back to Mumbai. Naturally I fell in love with the incredible diversity of cuisine, religion, language, ecology and everything else.

I took two cameras with me: an Olympus 35RC 35mm rangefinder for street shots and general photography (the rectangles), and a medium format 6x6 Mamiya C3 twin lens reflex for portraits and more formal compositions (the squares). Everything was shot on Kodak Gold 200, apart from a couple at the end that were shot on half a roll of Kodak Colorplus 200. Travelling for a long period with film at today’s prices and on my budget requires a bit of self-restraint - I limited myself to around 14 shots per day on 35mm and four on medium format. But then it’s these limitations and the intentionality that they force that are the reason digital photography has never satisfied me. I’d rather be enjoying the multi sensory overload of being in a new place than staring at a tiny screen and making incremental exposure and compositional adjustments until I get the ‘perfect’ shot.

Unfortunately, the Mamiya developed a shutter issue that I only identified after developing a few rolls when I got back to the UK - about 80% of the portraits I took on the trip were never exposed to film. There were definitely some great images that never saw the light (quite literally) and I’m sorry that I won’t be able to share them with the people who gave their time and hospitality to almost make them possible. Shooting film does have its dark side. Luckily enough survive to give a sense of some of the people I encountered and what I’m capable of. Please enjoy my depictions of southern India (and France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Turkey) as 2023 turned into 2024.

Click or tap on any of the photos for a larger view.