in next 10 minutes you'll realize that
I'm not a very good professional public
speaker but I would not apologize for
being an artist at 13 I tried to be a
painter but somehow I was very miserable
so to give up that very quickly and I
got my first camera when I was 13 and
it's been my lifelong passion since then
my father he's an economist and at a
very very early age we started moving he
worked in about 20 countries that meant
that I was exposed to a lot of diversity
and cultures across about 20 countries
my political antennas were sharpened at
a very early age partly to do with his
sustainable development work and lot to
do with the kind of schools I went to
one of my first school was an
international school in East Africa next
to Kilimanjaro and that's where I
started learning photography and I
realized that photography is a amazingly
powerful tool it can actually pass on
that message in a very different way and
then of course I went to art schools I
went to film schools but over a period
of time I realized that commercial
photography was okay because you know
you got to pay your bills but if I
wanted to be an artist I didn't really
want to be art for art's sake but for me
art has to be for larger social change
working on issues which are not
necessarily highlighted in mainstream
media for various reasons political
corporate you know all kinds of issues I
also over period of time
realized that my work had to get more
and more focused on issues with
I was getting directly exposed to and
last ten years of my work has been
really about conflict issues and what I
mean by conflict is not going to war but
for me conflict is about this whole race
for modernization consumption
urbanization energy needs so it's about
this modernity versus traditional
communities traditional way of living
especially in these areas where people
don't even have basic electricity but
their lands are all ripped apart for
coal or the waters are polluted for
supplying it to the open part of of
cities or you know urban part of the
country I also felt that being a
spectator photographer is no solution to
it because I can very easily go to these
remote areas shoot some pictures of some
dying community and bring it to New York
London or wherever and have this grand
exhibition everybody writes about it I
make a book out of it I really believe
that it's gotta be more about capacity
building it's gotta be more about
building blocks
it's about income generation it's about
getting involved in these issues right -
what the real problems are five years
back I was on a mission from on a world
war two Road there's not much of that
road but I was driving from southwest
part of China from Kunming through Upper
Burma into northeast part of India and I
came across this huge pits of coal mines
I mean I had seen mines before but this
was quite unbelievable that for miles
and miles it was it was open cause mines
and I don't know how many of you have
seen those but they just go and blow up
mountaintops it's not that that being
inside the ground and what it does is it
destroys that ever the water bodies that
it was are polluted of the forests are
gone
and I could still see these communities
living between all this so I've been
working with one particular community
it's a Buddhist tribe they're originally
from Burma they live in the Indian side
and they're only 1,500 of them and I
started working with one particular
village of 147 and that village it's
called funning and this is the project
what I'm talking about here I'll show
you a small little film which is will
just give you some idea in terms of what
all I have done there and what the
village looks like unfortunately I have
little clip to go with okay so this is
the Stillwell Road
this is World War 2 Road this is from
the Indian side actually and then you
come across this village which is off
the highway and this is a river which is
in the monsoon you can't go across but
lintels you can actually drive over it
and I helped set up a echo to listen
project their ecotourism lodge this is
the lodge it's got solar panels there's
no electricity in this village that's
the kitchen out on the outside these are
the kids who actually go to school now
the other thing is I'm not an
anthropologist but I one thing I really
felt was to document their way of life
there was music dance weddings culture
especially because it was such a small
community it was changing right in front
of me this is like where the children
actually go to school now on this little
boat it's kind of strange to go to a
school on a boat that's the monastry
which I've finished building now and
these are the coal mines this will give
you an idea what I'm talking about
they're just huge opencast mines the
water you can imagine what it is like
and this is back to the village
it's the textile they do there and this
is how I did the portraits what you saw
in the Bing and they're very huge
they're over seven feet tall that's how
the entire project was documented
now the point I'm trying to make here is
when I say about capacity building in
this community when I went in there it
was I got some seed money and a bunch of
people we developed a small eco tourism
lodge which is 100% owned run and
operated by the tribals I also had when
we started getting tourists we realized
that some of us out there actually feel
very guilty when we take these flights
across the planet because the huge
amount of aviation pollution we leave
behind our carbon footprint what they
say so I set up a small carbon footprint
exchange program where the tourists can
actually do is they can by certain
number of trees which the tribals would
raise and in exchange of course they get
some money and I would take pictures of
those trees and send them back to the
tourists or wherever they are they can
see how that tree is doing so that's one
part of it education program these kids
they go to english-speaking school now
there are quite a few of them the
monastery which I finished building that
has added income to the families because
they have these annual festivals there
where other Buddhist villages come there
and they donate rice and you know money
and all that more importantly the the
recent thing which I have started
working on is textile as we know that
textile is probably one of the oldest
crafts human beings have known and
unfortunately modernity and all that has
changed that in this village they have
been doing weaving for generations but
now that the flooding of garments coming
textile coming from factories in China
and India and Bangladesh and all that
that has kind of almost killed that
cottage industry so I've set up this
small little weaving Center so every
seven weeks I go with lots of empty
suitcases and I fill them up and I bring
them back either to Dubai or to New York
or wherever and a lot of people who are
actually really value hand-woven stuff
so this is a little exercise of textile
revival if I can say the example I'm
giving you about funning is about this
village is not
some obscure drive-in some obscure place
but actually these kind of communities
are across the planet there are
marginalized communities across the
planet whether it's developed part of
the world or underdeveloped part of the
world for example I'm working on another
project in East Africa which is on the
Albano's again it's something which is
more about empowerment it's more about
education and obviously some form of
income generation going back to the
photography part where I started with my
exhibitions are not typical photography
exhibitions but there are multimedia
experiences so like this particular
thing what you saw in the beginning
these are really massive images and they
sit in this total darkness it's like a
metaphor of a coal mine and you walk in
there and you have the soundscape which
you heard those are the real sounds of
that village because that village though
it gives out so much of coal it doesn't
have electricity so what I have is the
nice sounds of the village which plays
as a soundscape
into the show and then there's a film
which goes with it at the same time so
it's more like an experience I've had
the show is going in spring to London
and I'm hoping to bring it here to Dubai
hopefully soon so what I'm the point I'm
trying to make is that as an artist how
much are you for your art or are you
really interested in the larger cause
thank you