At the Edge of the Indian Ocean
Along the Indian coastline, the first sensation is not of sight but of smell. The air, thick with fish, collides with a swirl of unfamiliar fragrances. It hits hard, almost violently, before giving way to an outburst of colour. Then the eyes adjust and take command. Everything becomes texture: the salt-gnawed ribs of wooden boats, walls veined with cracks, tarpaulins whipped thin by the wind, fabrics glowing in the sun. Decay itself becomes a form of narrative; erosion, a keeper of memory.
Here, life is ruled by the sea. At dawn the fishermen push out, dark silhouettes etched against a washed-out sky. By evening they return, bodies still unsettled by the swell. The afternoons are for patching nets, for caulking hulls. The women preside over the markets, guardians of the day’s haul. I photographed these restless scenes where nothing stands still: the countless gestures, the cluttered backdrops, the sheer density of colour. Each frame is like a puzzle, demanding to be understood in an instant.
And then comes the stillness. When the heat bears down on the alleys and the stalls empty, silence seeps into the village. In that pause, the world reveals itself differently: stained walls, elongated shadows, fragments of colour combining into an unintentional canvas. It is then that I slow my pace. Photography becomes less an act of pursuit than of contemplation. A landscape here, a portrait there. I try to anchor these faces in their setting, holding on not just to the person but also to the fabric of their surroundings. For it is only together that they tell the story.
Leaving these shores, I carry with me the murmur of the sea interwoven with the voices of the markets. Nothing here feels permanent, and yet everything seems to repeat as it has since time began. My images are fragments, mere witnesses to this endless cycle: lives drawn up against the immensity of the ocean, and of those who shape its everyday rhythm, tide after tide.
