What would you do if you see all that you had in life, sinking right in front of you?
Life in the Sunderbans is intertwined with the rivers, the creeks, the flood and the consequent ebb. I started traveling to the Tide country four years back, during the onset of monsoon, planning to make images for my diploma project about a sinking island in the Sunderbans. Little did I know that monsoon would be one of the fiercest in the last decade, and never did I imagine that my life too would become intertwined with this cycle of flood and ebb. Ever since then, I’ve returned to the Sunderbans, like a meandering river flowing through the narrow creeks, sometimes losing ways only to find a completely new landscape.
In this work I propose to make a novella of my journey through the tide country, but based on honest impulses and real encounters as I travel across this vast and fragile ecosystem. The landscape keeps shifting like invisible cities from one island to another, the tide eats up the mangroves only to breathe them out during ebb.
Here it is a constant tussle between the human existence and the sea, to stop land from being dragged away and an impending conflict between human and wildlife. Islands, once home to several thousand people are at risk of being washed away forever, or have already been submerged.
Biography
Born in 1991, Swastik Pal is a graduate from Calcutta University, India.
After completing his post graduate diploma in mass communication from Jadavpur University, he received full scholarship to pursue Diploma in Photojournalism, at the Asian Center for Journalism, a World Press Photo partner organisation at Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines.
In 2015, he was the recipient of the National Foundation of India- National Media Photography Fellowship for his project- The Hungry Tide. He was nominated for the Joop Swart World Press Masterclass in 2015, 2017 and 2018.
He is keenly interested in photography and filmmaking. Presently he is an independent photographer based in Calcutta, working on long term projects. He recently completed a Masters in Film Studies from Jadavpur University, Calcutta.