Making a picture says a thousand words
For award-winning photojournalist Padma Shri Sudharak Olwe, a camera is a weapon that brings justice to the most marginalised of people
Rekha Mundah has swaddled her tiny two-month-old baby Bhoni so much that all you can see at first are a pair of extra-bright eyes. The hard-of-hearing mother from Khumtai village in Assam’s Dibrugarh district is understandably protective of her prematurely born daughter who weighed just one and a half kilos at birth and hasn’t gained much since. Bhoni’s medical reports echo what the naked eye can already tell – that she has Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM).To encounter a child like this and not only maintain one’s composure but also win the mother’s trust to take her pictures is really difficult. But photojournalist Sudharak Olwe does the difficult with consummate ease. He says a few reassuring words, but his empathic eyes say more, putting his subjects at ease. “I feel I belong to the people whose lives I’m capturing. I don’t go into their lives as an outsider. I understand and I empathise,” he says.
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