Tom Pietrasik

However I have to admit to suffering a tinge of frustration because, as all photographers know, fog can make for dramatic pictures. This photograph of rickshaw drivers grappling with the cold was taken before dawn while I waited for my Delhi-bound train to arrive at Moradabad station in northern India. I’d spent the previous week photographing a polio vaccination campaign for UNICEF and though this picture had nothing to do with the commissioned work, it was perhaps the most memorable image that I captured on that trip. As is so often the case in photography, it was the incidental moment, neither planned nor anticipated that yielded the most significant result.…

Jaipur’s fifth annual literature festival gets underway today. According to festival director and author William Dalrymple, writing in last Sunday’s Observer newspaper, the gathering is distinctive for it’s egalitarian spirit. Still in it’s infancy, but already attracting a long list of literary luminaries, Jaipur has apparently so far avoided the need for VIP enclosures and green rooms. Dalrymple proudly recalls the assimilation of Bollywood celebrities into the genial mood of previous Jaipur literature festivals. Having attended a few of book launches myself, I fully appreciate that maintaining this atmosphere of innocent bonhomie will be a difficult task. When I took this portrait of him just before Christmas, Dalrymple was already wearing his director’s hat and eagerly anticipating the literary excitement.…

Ultimately, the Financial Times magazine editors considered the significance of the young couple’s relationship so fundamental to the story that their affection for one another had to presented visually. Consequently they chose to reproduce a number of “collect photos” from Gaurav’s camera and these formed the basis of the opening spread. As much as I would have liked my photographs to have appeared more prominently in the feature I was entirely sympathetic to the editors decision to place them behind Gaurav’s blurred snapshots. The relevance of these photographs lies not in their quality but in the awkward depiction of an innocent and apparently unexceptional relationship that is so difficult to reconcile with the horror of subsequent events.…

Exactly five years ago, on the morning of December 26th 2004, I took a dawn flight to Chennai. I was looking forward to a bit of relaxation and had packed my swimming gear together with a couple of books and some Christmas gifts for the friends with whom I would be staying. It was two hours later, while disembarking with my camera bag that David asked why I had bothered to bring along all of my equipment. Surely, he wondered, a holiday wasn’t really a holiday if accompanied by the paraphernalia of work. As I explained, “what if something were to happen?” David didn’t seem particularly convinced by my argument.…

I was lucky enough to escape last week to the east Indian town of Puri in Orissa for particularly pleasant beach-side holiday. I did very little but relax, breathe in the ocean air and stroll along the shore with my camera. It was, as they say, just what the doctor ordered.…

A few days ago I was discharged from hospital after spending a week undergoing treatment for malaria contracted while working in eastern India. I could never have imagined that my own personal experience would provide such a stark confirmation of the pressing need to invest in essential public infrastructure like drainage.…

If the enthusiastic splashing of the students I met in Sri Lanka could be replicated elsewhere, we might have achieved a significant step towards reducing the appalling rate of child mortality.…

In the past twelve months I have been approached by three publications: America’s Art&Auction, the German ART Magazine and now The Times to illustrate features on the theme of Indian contemporary art. This alone is a measure of the recent international recognition bestowed upon Indian artists including Gupta who I have now photographed on two occasions. Of Gupta’s many wealthy patrons, François Pinault, who bought the artist’s Very Hungry God, is worth US$16.9 billion. It is a sorry commentary on our world to discover that Pinault’s fortune is greater than the entire annual wealth of Gupta’s home-state of Bihar (US$15.5 billion) with a population of 83 million people. It would be wrong to suggest that Gupta’s work helps us comprehend this injustice. But he is certainly one of those individuals whose life, work and success are defined by the disparity of our globalized economy.…