Dipankar Mukherjee Photography

The first trip I ever made on my own was walk from our home to my school in a small town in India. The path was witness to many scenes – con men trying to cheat people with their dexterous hands at a shell game, railway tracks with abandoned railway compartments giving shelter to homeless families, a stray dog following you either to bite you or expecting some food to be thrown at it, a street food vendor cleaning dishes in muddy water for his early morning customers – all of this made up my journey. It was a daily ritual with changing images.

Times have changed and the walk from the house to the school has now given way to trips around the world and the images are more varied and more thought-provoking.

Armed with a camera and endless curiosity, I have tried to capture many images that I came across during my travels. If only I had a camera during my school days. 

Years of travel around the world has changed general curiosity into better understanding of unpredictable situations – some wild, some humorous and some too crazy to process. Experiencing 40,000 year old rock art and cave paintings to Picasso’s Guernica; climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro to trekking in Iceland; street foods in the back alleys of Beijing to Michelin Star restaurants in Europe; pick pockets in Prague to daily free scotch at a hotel in Athens; a dog-escorted visit to the ruins of Agrigento in Sicily to a search for Kafka’s grave in Prague (figured out that map reading requires some basic skills); these and some more makeup my story.

Photographs captured in the moment reflect the past and that I believe influences the future. Although the image is still, “it has the ability to transcend time by playing on the imagination of the viewer”. 

The play on the senses leads to action, intentional or otherwise. 

To bring about an intentional change a continuous dialogue with the viewer is required. This dialogue gives rise to a better understanding of the world around us. The image of a sad face or an ancient ruin or a monument triggers questions that could be social, political, or economic – be it about an individual, a place or a situation. This is what leads us to crossing boundaries and in turn encounter more questions than answers.  And that is the intent.