The seeds for this piece were planted during a five day workshop conducted by Dakshin Foundation, where photographer Palani Kumar trained women from the fishing community in Coastal Odisha. Ch Pratima was one of the participants, and developed these photos in the subsequent months with constant dialogue and mentorship from Palani Kumar. During our conversation with Kumar, he spoke about how he wished to not just transfer the skills of photography to the people he trains, but how he also hopes to activate ways of politicizing the documentary image in collaboration with the new photographers he trains. Ch Pratima’s images are a radical departure from the Indian documentary photograph in numerous ways, be it due to her own subjectivity, or due to the surreal, apocalyptic imagery that she documents.

In the text, she shares her thoughts on photography, how she approaches the image, and the climate crises that she documents in her village, Podampeta. 

I picked up the camera for the first time when I met Palani Kumar through the NGO I work with. We were trained under a program for six months. The theme of it was data surveys and stories around migrant workers. This is where we were taught how to write stories, and take photos to go with the stories, and how to upload them into social media. We were trained for six months. Palani's session was for five days and he taught us the basics of photography. He brought his own cameras and left them here for three months, and asked us to take photos with them. Most of the photos you see here were taken by me during that time. 

Three months later, Palani sir put a few of my photos in an exhibition curated under Greenpeace. Due to those photos I was also invited to Chennai, to attend the exhibition. I was gifted a camera there, and my photos were appreciated.

Now I take photos using that camera and share them. I never really thought of photography before the workshop. Even the photos I'd take with mobile phones won't come out well and my family would tease me about them.

This was a new experience, taking photos at the community level. Usually we don't even click photos like this of community members, and the world around us. Even when we click photos on our phones every day, we don't think of such a subject. So this felt and feels like a very novel experience. I felt very enriched, photographing as someone from within the community, and as a woman. How the image forms in such a scenario feels very unique. 

Women roaming around the community with a camera are full of both shame and wonder. 

When we trained initially, we began to ponder the world around us as pictures: shooting the fishermen community, how fishing is done, how curing and drying of fish is done, and so on. Looking at the world around us through the lens of a camera made it feel very different than how we were used to seeing it. While I was photographing two fishermen returning after fishing, I decided to put the soil erosion in the background in one photo. Palani sir singled out that photo and called it powerful. Initially, I could not understand what is powerful about it. I didn't even think the photo was special. The focus on it was off. I contemplated and asked him why he called it so. He then told me about how the theme of what is depicted in the photo is what makes it powerful. With this understanding, I started shooting the abundant imagery of the soil erosion around me.

As I did this, I started thinking of the massive amount of photos I was taking. Usually in my head, a project is something I would wrap up in a day or two. I thought the photographic subject was limited. Once it's captured, it is done. But this insisted repetition made me think of the subject matter and its dynamic nature, and the ways in which it can be depicted differently each time. I would also not like photographing the same ruins and the same sahi (sub-section of the village, often caste-based) and the same people multiple times. But Palani sir told me that this is what practice is. The more times I shoot, the more my next image is going to be refined. From 10 photos, only 2 would be great. Some won't have focus, some won't have clarity, or colour contrast, and so, the act of photography is actually an act of elimination, he explained. That the photographic image is sometimes created much later than when it is first captured. Slowly, as I kept taking more and more photos, I started to understand composition better.  

My framing of the doors is very good, Palani sir remarked. When the images were put together, he told me, "See now, how repetition does not mean sameness." How each door is different, how the framing and sections of each door is telling a story and it looks so brilliant as a body of work instead of a singular image. Together, they tell the tale of the crisis better. 

The images of these doors and the ruins surrounding them tell the story of my village Podampeta. 

This erosion has been happening since my childhood, but I'd say it has been accelerating especially since 2007. The sea keeps progressing ahead. The coast gets eaten up every year. Even in the last 2-3 years, the waves have been much more choppy, causing the erosion to be much more steep. When I started photographing in 2022, the sea was stiller. From 2023 to end-2024, the sea advanced much more and ate up two whole streets. 

In 2011, the  erosion caused an entire village to become inhospitable, 110 households had to relocate. Their houses were directly on the sand, right on the coast, and the erosion completely consumed the sahi. When the ODRP (Odisha Disaster Recovery Project) scheme came along two years later, during cyclone Phailin, the other 300 households that were staying here also shifted away gradually. The scheme involved building houses away from the seabed in a different settlement colony. Since there was the promise of new houses away from the yearly unfolding crisis, most households opted to relocate. Slowly our village became a ghost village.

The photos I have taken are only a fragment of the houses that still remain. A lot of the houses have been completely swallowed by the sea. 

Only two families including mine stay here still. It is completely deserted. Whenever people come this side, they ask me, “Do you not feel scared living amid the ruins?” There's another village 800 metres away, but the forest of cashew and casuarina trees covers the path between here and there entirely. We insist on living here as I've been here since I was born, and it feels more strange leaving the place entirely, than it does inhabiting the edge of the sea. We also built a house in the new locality during the relocation scheme. But the idea of shifting there fully is difficult to comprehend for me. 

The shifting climate patterns have significantly changed the migration patterns of people from the villages here. Earlier, around 2010-11, only about ten percent of the people would leave to seek work elsewhere. But these days, more than eighty percent of the people leave. Most of them would fish here, but now work as labourers on large boats and fishing trawlers in Kanyakumari, Kerala etc. We fish with small boats here. There aren't many big boats like those in the other states. So going deep into the sea is extremely dangerous, especially now, with the increasing, erratic intensity of the waves. Some people are leaving for 4-5 months, some for 6-7. Some have also started doing construction work, and entire families move in that case. The tradition of fishing is reducing more and more. It is also reducing due to the younger generation getting educated and leaving the caste occupation. Only the ones who are not good at studies and unable to hold jobs in the city return to continue fishing. For the parents, it is about upward mobility and leaving their caste occupation.

Any clear pattern or seasonality of fishes themselves has collapsed entirely. Seasonal fish are disappearing and their patterns are drastically unpredictable now. Sometimes, random fish show up. Fish that would last for three months are lasting 15 days or a month. Fish quantities are also decreasing. Some fishes are disappearing to the point of extinction.

All of these factors mean our villages are unrecognizable compared to even the relatively recent past. 

Nowadays, I continue documenting the erosion, and the rapid shifts around me. Whenever I think a valuable story is forming, I photograph based on that. I am understanding the value of taking photos every day. I feel so proud that my photos are being displayed in exhibitions. Due to this continuous work, another NGO has gotten in touch with me, and are teaching me to do videography. I hope to learn this and make documentaries around my home in the future.