Snapshots from the life of a photographer couple

Every creative person yearns to revisit the country that had mentored and taught the student in him in his amateur years. Lenswoman Olivia Arthur is one such artiste. Along with husband Philip Ebeling, who too is a talented shutterbug, she continues to return to India, where her long-term work has been supported by a grant from the Paris-based Fondation Jean-Luc Lagadere, which also patronises her work in London, where she currently lives.

Last November, the British Council, in association with Harrington Street Arts Centre, had played gracious host to these two eminent UK-based photographers in Kolkata. They talked about their work, their practice and Fishbar — their jointly-founded photo book publication, running in its sixth year. It is a space for photography with a gallery created in Dalston, east London. The couple also spoke about the books they had launched then in Delhi while participating at the Delhi Photo Festival.

“I was drawn towards photography, both for its still frames as well as the underlying suggestiveness,” asserts Ebeling recently in an email interview. “It has the power to transport the viewer to a different place and perspective, which may or may not be originally intended by the lensman. I want all my pictures to tell a story as each one is said to be worth a thousand words. Snapshots can thus substantiate a narrative, dig up important issues and make a write-up in print come alive,” he further elaborates to explain his point. Ebeling trebles up as an independent photographer, publisher of photography and a curator. He is also the curator of Unknown Quantities Young Magnum and Father and Son Pablo and Richard Bartholomew, both at Fishbar. He was also the publisher and editor of Jeddah Diary by Olivia Arthur.

Having been born in London and grown up in the UK, Arthur studied mathematics at Oxford University and photojournalism at the London College of Printing. She began working as a photographer in 2003 after moving to Delhi and was based in India for two and a half years. “My career began here in India. I could inwardly feel a smack of affection for this country. You know, you either find a filament of connect with something to hit it off immediately or you never do, despite sticking to it for ages. India was that magical haven for me where I literally loved to learn about photography,” she fondly recalls, confirming that India holds a special place inside her heart. It did open up a unique window to strange mixes of realism and abstractness for her.

“You see, a shutterbug’s senses inhale everything through practical experiences. The colours, actions, warmth of the local people, the heat and the dust, the hustle-bustle, the vibrancy around, all were exotic to my eyes and yet absorbed me like an important part within its core. I also looked for some calm and quietude along the banks of the holy rivers of the Ganges and the Yamuna,” she shares. “You know, these sites are in close touch with nature, thus providing purity and ample breathing space to sit back and reflect on the immediate projects at hand,” she muses.

Her frequent travels either on invitation or on exploration prompted her to stand at the crossroads between her own past, native experiences as well as the new encounters she bumped into and the cultural influences she dearly embraced. From Kashmir in India, Istanbul in Turkey to Iran in the middle-east, plus the republic of Azerbaijan and the Saudi Arabian nation, Arthur’s camera kept recording the lives, moments, moods, emotions, situations and struggles of women across the terra firma, separated by geographical boundaries but bound by strokes of destiny. “In some conservative cultures, I was allowed alone, but not my camera. Albeit I felt a strong strain of affinity and correlation being a woman myself, there were yet certain cultural disparities that cut above the gender line and brought me face to face with the ground realities I was hitherto unfamiliar with or far removed from. It was difficult for women to talk about their missing husbands who disappeared from the conflict zones, or for those tough hearts who stood up against polygamy. They all projected social pressures and familial expectations of a different kind,” she says about her personal tryst with the assignments. It is so fascinating to look at these images as each one tells a tale and lazing book-browsers can even read the corresponding texts alongside on transparent paper to gather valuable information on the same. The swathes of rural Georgia, the terrain of the Ural Mountains, the happy faces at fun-filled weddings in Iran, the glum faces of women in prison, the brothel streets of Istanbul, a 13-year-old girl with a baby in Russia — all vignettes focused on the natural landscapes and women’s lives.

In 2010, she co-founded Fishbar with Ebeling. “The publishing job poses quite a challenge because it’s difficult to stand out with the best product amidst a sea of books. You see, distribution work is really tough. For reaching out to a large number of audience, i.e. wooing maximum readership, is the ultimate destination harbour for all the publishing houses,” she notes. “What we do at Fishbar is something out of sheer love and passion. We think about our viewers first, who are our foremost priority. We interact with them and invite them to a forum for discussions and exchange ideas, opinions, etc across the table. Of course, the oceanic Internet is there to surf, explore and write blogs, plus pick and promote a particular book,” she informs. Admitting the expensive nature of the production costs with chains of middlemen looming in the market, Arthur prefers to sell online to directly tap her target group.

Her debut book, Jeddah Diary, about young women in Saudi Arabia, was published in 2012. “It is often frustrating for photographers to be unable to click their subjects in proper light and angles, more so if the latter refuses to get photographed. Again it is a snapper’s duty to protect their sources’ identities. In the land of the Saudis, I was thrown into a peculiar fix, wherein I became privy to women’s pristine personal rooms and their walled existence inside huge compounds but permission wasn’t granted to visually document their plight. They became quite free and frank with me but I had to shoot them with blurry faces to respect their secrecies,” she reveals. The flashlight is clearly visible and the texture seems fuzzy. There are no distinct edges of clarity to define the women in the pictures, except a frizzy figure lying on the foreground.

Arthur’s widely reputed tome, The Stranger, navigates a shipwreck that happened over five decades ago on April 8 in 1961. The tragedy took place when the MV Dara, a vessel carrying passengers between India, Pakistan and the Gulf, sank just off the port of Dubai. An estimated 238 people lost their lives. The Stranger therefore imagines a survivor returning to Dubai 50 years later and what he would see. Through photographs and small anecdotes, the viewer is taken on a journey through a city that is both awe-inspiring and alienating. The backbone of the project is the story of the shipwreck, transporting the viewer back and forth in history and acting as a reminder of the fragility and skin-deep nature of Dubai. Reflecting this fragility and suggesting the feelings of loneliness, isolation and disorientation often experienced by the residents of Dubai, the book is printed on transparent paper. The result is that the layered images fade in and out of view, interspersed with quotes, memories and images of the shipwreck itself. It is said that the near and dear ones continued long after to look for their family members and relatives amongst survivors, if any.

“You see, at a time when people are mostly living in the present with a short-lived memory, it becomes all the more significant to turn back the pages of history and look into the past. Many have this uncanny inherent curiosity to look at the forgotten times and trace them out. I tried it in my way,” she states. “The bizarre quality of Dubai is that it is designed in three categories of topography — the urban sphere with its plush, glassy high-rises, the water-body at the gulf area and the sandy stormy desert. It’s a strange city. Having spent three months researching on the drowning of the ship, I also moved around in the old quarters of the town, recording overheard conversations, ambient noises, scenic beauties and jotting down the same into small snippets, some of them later drawn from the memories of flashbacks for the book,” she summarises.