These award-winning photographers are selling their pictures to raise funds for migrant workers
Sohrab Hura, the only Indian photographer after Raghu Rai to be a member of Magnum Photos, as well as Martin Parr, Matilde Gattoni, Vasantha Yogananthan and Paromita Chatterjee among others have donated their stunning pictures for Prints for India. All net proceeds will go to the NGO Goonj.
Prints for India, the photo print fundraiser featuring some of the most world-renowned and emerging photographers is running an initiative to raise funds for migrant workers stuck in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. This fundraiser is scheduled to run for four weeks starting April 24 and has a total collection of 70 images. Over and above this, Prints for India will also announce a secret photographer for a week-long flash sale each Friday. Every print is an unsigned edition, of exhibition quality and is priced at £80.
The sale features several well-known photographers as well as emerging talent including Martin Parr, Matilde Gattoni, Soham Gupta, Sohrab Hura, Ed Kashi, Sanjit Das, Andrea Bruce
and Laura McPhee among several others. Founded by four photographers who met during a Magnum workshop with Martin Parr in New Delhi in early 2020, the initiative is an attempt to aid the ‘millions of day laborers and migrant workers suddenly trapped with no resources or income.’
According to the website, all net proceeds from the sale of the prints will go to the Rahat-19 program of Goonj, the non-governmental organisation which is currently running a
pan-India aid mission for migrants, daily wagers, and the most vulnerable who’ve been affected by the national lockdown following the Covid19 pandemic.
These are some of the pictures up for sale
On set of Winter
Shot by Anurag Banerjee an independent Mumbai-based photographer, whose work Love in Bombay documents intimacy in public spaces in the city, this picture is available on printsforindia.com. Banerjee’s Love in Bombay has been published in several print magazines and online. In October, he self-published his first handmade photobook I’m not here about his evolving relationship with his home and the idea of home.
Untitled
Up next is Matilde Gattoni’s photograph of a little girl who wanted to be photographed while she was doing a story on her aunt, a tea plucker in West Bengal. Gattoni is an award-winning French-Italian photographer based in Barcelona who covers social, environmental and human rights issues around the world. Since the start of her career in 2000, she has worked extensively in the Middle East, South and Central Asia and Africa and has covered topics such as droughts, refugee emergencies, illegal mining, mass migrations, large scale land grabbing and climate change for more than one hundred newspapers and magazines worldwide.
From the Series 'Help Desk - Random Acts of Administration'
This is a picture by Ole Witt shot outside of the Gujarat High Court. Is of a coordinator who’s improvised his desk on a scooter. Witt studied photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover and continued his studies at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. His work has been published in magazines such as Spiegel Online, Stern etc and has been exhibited at several international festivals. Ole Witt was also among the finalists of the Lensculture Exposure Awards 2017, the VGH Prize 2018 and the BFF Förderpreis 2019. The series to which this photograph belongs won him the Kolga Newcomer Award in 2018.
The Workers
Photographer Vasantha Yogananthan draws inspiration from the imagery associated with The Ramayana and its pervasiveness in everyday Indian life, the seven-book project A Myth of Two Souls explores the space between reality and fiction.
Gurukul
Paromita Chatterjee’s photograph features two young girls from the Ma Anandmayee kanyapeeth, a women-only hermitage in the heart of Varanasi. “After a busy day at the gurukul, two hours in the evening are allotted for the girls’ playtime,” she writes. “Here two girls are seen relaxing on the ashram terrace. When the girls leave behind the serenity of the ashram and plunges into the river of life, they carry a part of Gurukul with them, refuse to give up their moral or ethical upbringing at the hermitage.”
Flying Family
Also on sale is this picture by Erinn Springer, a Wisconsin-born documentarian based in NYC whose work explores ephemeral moments and enduring relationships between people and place. The picture was shot when she was travelling to Jodhpur in 2018.
