© Siva Sai Jeevanantham from the series 'In The Same River'

Hello Siva Sai, you were recently featured on the catalog of Blurring the Lines which shortlists every year compelling graduates' work from international schools of photography. In The Same River stem from your thesis at National Institute of Design of Gandhinagar, India. Could you briefly introduce your work, and why did you choose to investigate conflicts in the Kashmir region?

Siva Sai Jeevanantham (SJ): I don’t have any personal experience directly linked to Kashmir, but I was always curious about conflict- not just the political conflict, general human conflicts. I was born in a Tamil-Indian family, brought up amidst the Sri Lankan (Ilangai) Tamil civil war. Even though I have never visited (Ilangai) Sri Lanka, My close family were staunch supporters of Tamil Ezham, which exposed me to the idea of occupation and violations at a younger age. I still remember the 13-year-old me sitting and watching the documentary of brutal killings of lakhs of innocent Sri Lankan Tamils with my family. For me, Kashmir is a window through which I see Tamil Eelam. In time the transnational solidarity grew only stronger. There was a conflict that was always going on in my head. The idea of good and bad. I always had the idea of going and fighting for civil justice. When I went to Kashmir, I know that something was going on. I feel the connection from the situation I saw in Kashmir to that one I saw on television when I was a child. That has created curiosity about the Kashmir fighting. I wanted to know what had happened. The cause was my photographic memory, my photographic subconscious, I think.

© Siva Sai Jeevanantham from the series 'In The Same River'. An application by Abdul Rehman Khan to the Defence Minister, requesting permission to meet his son Fayaz Ahmad.

© Siva Sai Jeevanantham from the series 'In The Same River'. Basheer Ahmad Sofi was the last of Hajra Begum’s sons to be taken. He was taken by the 14 Rashtriya Rifles from a baker’s shop in Onagam, Bandipora. Basheer occupies the centre of this collage. His brothers (clockwise) Naseer Ahmad, Mohammad Rafiq, Fayaz, Ijaz and Farooq, all feature in it.

© Siva Sai Jeevanantham from the series 'In The Same River'

What about the title 'In The Same River'?

SJ: The project’s title is inspired by Heraclitus's quote “We both step and does not step in the same rivers. We are and are not” - where he talks about memory is not the same when we are revisiting it. The project dwells around the importance of resistance movement. A personal relation that I felt was how my own memory of a conflict has subconsciously affected me in talking about conflicts.

What is your formal education?

SJ: I took my Post-Graduate Diploma in Journalism, from Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Jammu Tawi. And then I studied photography in the National Institute of Design, one of the most important Institutes in India. My project started as a post-graduation project and it’s still going on. A part of it was my dissertation thesis. I couldn’t take it forward after that. I am grateful for the Indian Photography Festival’s grant for supporting this project, hence making me expand it and still work on it.

From a methodological point of view, how did you conduct your investigation, and how did you collect the materials? Have you collaborated with any association or institution?

SJ: I worked with the Association of Parents of Disappeared Person’s (APDP) founded by Parveena Ahanger, a victim’s mother. Her son was abducted by the Indian Army and subjected to enforced disappearance. APDP has a record of these families and the official documents. Initially, this project started as a newspaper report that I had to do as an intern. Eventually evolved into a thesis project and, after, as a post-graduation project. I came to Kashmir in 2015. I started with a reporting approach. For me, being a photographer was taking pictures, and that was my approach. Still in Kashmir, I knew that there was a situation that prevented me from taking pictures. A short circuit in the idea of Kashmir as a beautiful place and what's going on there. Many Indians describe Kashmir as like Heaven on Earth, so it was very traumatic for me when I witnessed the cruelty of the Indian forces. I took some pictures that couldn't be published in the newspaper I worked for. So my professor told me to try another approach. I went through the files and saw that family's everyday images were investigative documents and proof of existence.

© Siva Sai Jeevanantham from the series 'In The Same River'. Farooq Ahmad’s sons Ishfaq and Hilal at Nowgam, Kashmir.

My general process is to go through these documents collected by APDP and shortlist cases and visit them. Since 2016, I have visited around 100 families in Kashmir, and I take short interviews, look at their photographs. I was aware of everything when I started my work. I have my journalistic approach, and I know that everything I have to do is talk with people and understand and take in information.

In the same river is a project about memory, resistance and imagination. Can you tell us something about the way you started to think about it?

SJ: I wanted this project and the imagery that I am creating itself to be a resistance; by this, I mean how photographers and artists who come to Kashmir look at Kashmir. When I first visited Kashmir, I was unable to photograph victims. I was unable to photograph those beautiful landscapes, which most Indians describe as a heaven on earth. I broke down and questioned myself. That’s when the idea of being a photographer changes, I tried to look at images differently.

For me, memory was outlined in the photographs because the work of families was to keep those pictures safe. I decided to structure my project in three chapters: the first one is “memory”, the second one is “body”, and the third one is “resistance”. So there’s a link between the body and his absence. In Kashmir the body is discriminated against, so that was what I wanted to describe. The land is a land of conflict. The land was beautiful but there is a lot of violence, documented by photographs. And the body also was violated with tortures, violence. Photographic memory actualises the resistance and talks about the dispossession of the body and the occupation of land. Memory is the first thing that I observed in every Kashmiris they remember because that is what fuels the resistance.

The collective experience of memory is fundamental to recompose an ideal of identity. In the same river places the political situation of Kashmir in opposition with the "mystical world" that family portraits represent. 

SJ: When these photos were taken, the people weren’t aware of what will happen in their lives, just like a regular family album. When we look at it now, it doesn’t mean the same anymore. When I started my project, I felt a social injustice in taking pictures as other photographers, that there was something different to narrate. There were these beautiful landscapes, and the people around me were crying and suffering. When I started talking with APDP activists, they said that they weren’t suffering; they were fighting. Of course, they were suffering, but the image they wanted to give to Indians was that they were fighting and that was the starting point of my investigation.

The photographs that I wanted to take weren’t of a mystical place. After years of education in India, Kashmir was represented as a mystical place. It pushes me to see Kashmir as a Heaven on Earth, where everything is beautiful and everyone is happy. The people took their family portraits as everyone does in the rest of the world. So when I put my eyes, as an Indian, on these pictures, the first thing I thought. “These portraits are very old”. They took it with some expectations that, in the years, had become something else. I remember the photo of a marriage. The husband disappeared a few weeks after the marriage and the picture had become investigative material too. But, for the bride, it was an object that comforted her. For some, the photograph is an actualisation of the presence of the disappeared person. We must remember that these pictures were taken in the ’90, and it wasn’t so common to take pictures every day. You can think that the look that the families of disappeared people have is nostalgic, but, in reality, it isn’t.

© Siva Sai Jeevanantham from the series 'In The Same River'. Abdul Rashid and Zeena Begum on their first vacation after marriage.

© Siva Sai Jeevanantham from the series 'In The Same River'

© Siva Sai Jeevanantham from the series 'In The Same River'. Abdul Rashid Malik was 18 years old when he was taken from his home in Kupwara district. Two Intelligence Bureau officers reportedly took him and handed him over to the 66 BSF Camp in Kupwara. Abdul Rashid is seen here holding a baby and posing before the Kashmir landscape in a studio.

There are some people too that say: “I can’t see this picture anymore!”. I remember one situation where I was in a house, and the family gave me the photograph and said to me: “Don’t show the picture to the mother, because she has heart problems. Just keep it to yourself”. The mother knows that I had it, but she can’t see it anymore.

There are some people too that say: “I can’t see this picture anymore!”. I remember one situation where I was in a house, and the family gave me the photograph and said to me: “Don’t show the picture to the mother, because she has heart problems. Just keep it to yourself”. The mother knows that I had it, but she can’t see it anymore. Your research talked about the fruition of photographs. When people disappear, family portraits become investigative material. So, there's a short circuit that gives us the violence and the sorrow these families live. Can you tell us how this can be a form of political resistance?

SJ: Many families that I visited still hold on to these photographs and even some unauthorized documents that they received from a random army man. The founder of APDP describes how an army person wrote her a visiting pass on her hand; she says that’s the only document missing in her son’s file bag because she didn’t have access to a photocopier or a mobile phone to take photos of her hand back in the 90s.
The families keep archiving all the materials related to the victim. When the photocopy starts to fade, they make sure they take a fresh one. Sometimes they hide a copy of these documents and photographs because that’s the first thing the Indian military would destroy if there is a raid in their house. In time the archive is growing just like the victim should have.

© Siva Sai Jeevanantham from the series 'In The Same River'. Jammu and Kashmir high court’s judiciary inquiry report on Ghulam Nabi Bhat’s abduction.

Even the family portrait takes multiple forms; as recent weddings happen, the victim’s photo is cut out and is morphed into the new one. These actions make me think about “To remember is to resist”. They don’t want closure because they believe accepting that their son, husband, or father is dead would make them mourn and eventually forget, henceforth forgive the injustice.

© Siva Sai Jeevanantham from the series 'In The Same River'. Manzoor Ahmad of Mandi Chattabal, Srinagar, was taken away by Indian security forces. His aunt Khatija remembers the night when forces cordoned off the whole locality and barged into their house at around midnight. An officer named ‘Malhotra’ from the 35 Rashtriya Rifles told her that Manzoor was being taken away for an identification parade. According to an inquiry conducted by the Inspector General of Police, Manzoor was a former rebel. He had returned to Kashmir after his parent’s death and become the sole earner for his aunt’s family. Individual photographs of Manzoor, his aunt Khatija and his cousins were stuck together to make a collage that could double as a family photograph.

Did you show your project to the people portrayed? If yes, what was the reaction? And are you thinking of any other follow-up for this project?

SJ: No, I haven’t because the work is still ongoing. I am working on a photobook. I have shown some pages to a few families. They all are very supportive of the work and are hopeful that they will all get justice someday. Once, a victim’s mother told me, “We keep talking about this because someday someone will listen, it doesn’t matter whether it is happening in my lifetime or not, there are so many waiting for justice in this land. Everyone will live at least 60 years. All our children know about the stories. That’s how much crime India has committed; we have a lot of time”.

Siva Sai Jeevanantham (instagram)