In India, again

Arabian Sea, Bombay, Maharashtra, 1983. Pic by Mitch Epstein/Courtesy of Steidl Verlag

Between 1978 and 1989, American photographer Mitch Epstein made eight trips to India capturing its sights and experiences through thousands of photographs while collaborating with then-wife Mira Nair, shooting her documentary films and working closely on her iconic works Salaam Bombay and Mississippi Masala. Epstein hasn't returned to India since 1990, but the distance from that time and its heady experiences has granted him an opportunity for introspective reflection and detachment.

In his introduction to In India, Epstein writes about how his own position as an insider and outsider in the country became clear as he photographed a group of fully clothed Indians watching bikini-clad white women sitting on top the wall of a hotel at Juhu Beach in Bombay. "It was, for me, a moment of both detachment and identification," he writes. "I was neither a western tourist nor an Indian, I was none of the people I was photographing; yet, I could somewhat identify with them all." Pics by Mitch Epstein/Courtesy of Steidl Verlag

"Over the last decade, I have been revisiting work, seeing it in fresh ways and trying to understand its relevance today. I have remastered a lot of my images from the 1980s in India and also discovered a lot of work that I hadn't given priority or due attention to when I was in the midst of what was a very intense and full period," Epstein, who has been a photographer for almost 50 years with work going back to the early '70s, tells us over a Zoom call from New York. The result is In India, a book made with printer and publisher Gerhard Steidl, who Epstein calls a master bookmaker.

Mitch Epstein. Pic by/Nina Subin

In 1987, Epstein had published some of his photographs from this time in In Pursuit of India (Aperture) which, as he points out, suggests in its very title a more romanticised view of the country. "For all artistes, time can be a great beneficiary. It encourages us to relinquish our attachments, infatuations and romanticism without relinquishing what I appreciated in terms of the beauty of India," he shares. Even though he was married into an Indian family, it was the first time he was in the position of an outsider, an experience that he says served him well as a picture maker. "India turned my life upside down in good ways because it was destabilising," he observes, the time giving him an understanding of the framework of Indian society and its stratifications of caste, class and religion, while allowing him to move unselfconsciously in the world that he inhabited. He recalls traversing the various visually compelling subcultures and communities he encountered in India, including its colonial relics like Mumbai's Royal Bombay Yacht Club as well as its crowded bazaars and beaches. "It was a time in India when it was possible for me as an outsider to navigate through sacred ceremonies and events like the Ganpati festival in 1981," he says. People showed warmth and curiosity and were charmed by having their pictures taken, he remembers. "If anything, that was a problem sometimes," he laughs. "I didn't want 50 kids smiling because that wasn't going to be interesting to me photographically even though I appreciated their desire for attention and that kind of interaction." The '80s, however, says Epstein, recalling the days immediately following Indira Gandhi's assassination, also marked the beginning of a shift in India, when religion became more politicised.

The last image in Epstein's book is of a woman with a child sitting next to her at Churchgate station in Bombay as commuters rush by. "The opportunities that I had to go deeply into some of these micro worlds working with Mira [Nair] changed the game in terms of my own practice because I came from a tradition of being withheld somewhat behind the camera and I slowly began to have a more open view of the exchange. I became less beholden to a documentary truth, making pictures that spoke to the experience in a more personal, authentic way," says Epstein

While colour has always been intrinsic to his work, Epstein was also working with tools and material that was not common at the time - a medium-format custom-made camera, that he says enabled him to work fluidly with handheld and yet have a tonal subtlety and resolution more in keeping with a large format negative camera. While there was a strong ethnographic precedent established by the magazine world, he was on to something different, he says, more interested in whether it would be possible for him as an American to make pictures that would have any meaning to others. Back then, his work in the US gravitated towards photographing people at leisure, a theme that continued in these works. "While walking in the streets and parks, I was taking pleasure in the act of photographing, but also recognising, celebrating, investigating people taking pleasure," he explains, referring to a picture taken in Lodhi Gardens in Delhi in 1983, which showed two men in repose, listening sleepily to a radio between them. His interest was in the photographic tableau, he says, building layered pictures with a focal point that was part of a larger interplay, while weaving elements which he had limited control over, a fact that made the process more thrilling. "I wanted to get at the richness of life on the streets, and build pictures that were layered with subtle juxtapositions, but not so layered that they would be chaotic and overwhelming."

Couple at Nishat Gardens in Kashmir in 1981. "While walking in the streets and parks, I was taking pleasure in the act of photographing, but also recognising people taking pleasure," says Epstein

Mumbai, then Bombay, occupies a prominent place in Epstein's book, presented through glimpses of its striptease cabarets, Bollywood movie sets and Zaveri Bazaar. "I loved Bombay," says Epstein, who grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and moved to New York in 1972 where he studied photography. "One of the things I love about New York is that I always felt that I had a certain anonymity out in the city and I felt something similar in Bombay - that I could be myself more freely. Bombay was also this city that like New York never slept." Moreover, port cities, he says, have always fascinated him for being cultural meeting grounds.

The decade Epstein spent in India, he says, taught him to be honest, generous and "to listen with my eyes", explaining how his process is one not of assertion but of opening himself to receive experiences. "Those lessons I still carry with me," he says. "Right now, in the world which is so deeply divided in political and religious ways, the courage and importance of crossing borders is essential. In India, I worked at what it meant to cross those borders and not be inhibited by them."