India 2010–11 | Portraits
The series of portraits on display in this section originates from a nearly five month long journey over 13.000 kilometers in 42 stages around the Indian subcontinent between October 2010 and February 2011. Most of the way we travelled by railway, some of it by bus, and a tiny fraction through Keralas backwaters by ferryboat. At the time I was obsessed with taking photographs of people not knowing that their photograph is taken. Pure documentary, or the Cartier-Bressonian ideal as I thought it to be at the time. Only that a good many Indians thought otherwise and more or less insistingly offered them to be photographed time and again. Then I thought that behavior distracted me from taking the photographs I wanted to take. Back in Europe I in a way rediscovered the photographs and many of the Indian portraits now count among my most precious pictures I brought back from the subcontinent.
