Mallaah: Boatmen of the Kumbh

"I have chosen to depart from my recognisable artistic techniques and to take a more direct and hopefully, a visually dynamic viewpoint. My conscious approach was to keep it true to a realism that is authentic, whilst leaning towards the poetic. It was also intentful for me to stick to spontaneous compositions and lighting of the subjects, inspired by the work of some early twentieth-century Pictorialists," Shibu Arakkal

"Shibu Arakkal's work, as I see it, is a drift from the popular ideas of consumption and cultural codes. As a subject matter, his choice of working with the Mallaah boatmen of the Gangetic geography and landscape suggests that the act of seeing, witnessing, photographing and documenting lives can be done through a fourth eye," - Riyas Komu, Artist and Curator.

"This series was born from the life of these people and a journey that is so relevant to the Kumbh story and that of these rivers. It is a reality I trace in relation to my own response to it and an understanding of these people and to not try and interpret something that I might never incisively understand," Shibu Arakkal.

"The idea of photography like this seems to me closer to the idea of painting where reality is represented to us in a diffracted way. Seeing the work of Shibu Arakkal, I am overwhelmed by the manner in which his technique of making shades of scars visible, that of history of an abandoned community, as it is passing into oblivion before our very eyes," - Riyas Komu.

"The works themselves have been conceptualised through a story-telling visual technique, and still maintaining a distinct demarcation from the photojournalistic genre, also critically preserving the realness of the subject. While consciously meaning to be less interpretative and more authentic to a photographic realism, I am as always, coming from an artist's style and viewpoint," Shibu Arakkal.