Duality of Photograph: A Perspective | Session-III of Khichik
- Admin Ohana
- Mar 22
- 2 min read
March 21, 2026 mark the Khichik – Session III gathered around a single, uncomfortable idea: that every photograph holds two truths at once — what was there, and what it means. Not one or the other. Always both.
Sontag called it a choice. Barthes called it a certificate of presence. We called it an afternoon worth sitting through.
We began in Ennore, Chennai. M. Palani Kumar’s Murky Water led us there — to a creek running grey under five decades of industrial consequence, to a community living in the blind spot of a city that profits from their silence. His lens doesn't mourn. It indicts. Not with anger, but with the quiet devastation of simply showing what is there, and trusting that seeing it is enough.
Then Vikas Nama pulled us inward with his series Binary — Duality of Being asked us to sit inside the fold between opposites — where light doesn't just illuminate, it exposes, and where darkness doesn't just hide, it shelters. There are no villains in his frames. Only the uncomfortable truth that good and evil share the same shadow, and the most honest photographs live exactly there.
And then — Absconding Sleep in a general coach. Bandra to Haridwar. A woman and her daughter, asleep. Packed in triple the seats it was built for. No gallery credit. No exhibition wall. Just Abhinav Raj's quiet act of noticing that exhaustion, when shared among strangers, becomes something close to tenderness — and that this, too, deserves a frame.
Three photographs. Three different answers to the same question: What is a photograph for?
We thought of Danish Siddiqui — Pulitzer Prize winner, Reuters photojournalist — who pressed the shutter where most turned away, and gave his life in that commitment. His images of India's pandemic did not ask for your sympathy. They asked for your witness. There is a difference.
We thought of Hayahisa Tomiyasu — whose Table Tennis Table series fixed its gaze on a single ping-pong table across changing seasons, strangers, and silences. Same frame. Infinite stories. A reminder that framing is never accidental, and what you choose to hold still says everything about what you believe is worth holding.
What you include. What you exclude. Where you stand. When you press the shutter. Every photograph is a decision. Every decision is a perspective. And every perspective is already an argument. Photography is not either art or document. It is always both.
Let’s engage in the comment section with your point of views.
Nice event!!