Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh

Title: Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh

Photographer(s): Prarthna Singh

Writer(s): Skye Arundhati Thomas, Sabbika Abbas Naqvi, Aamir Aziz and Ankur Tewari 

Designer(s): Sameer Kulavoor & Zeenat Kulavoor/ Bombay Duck Designs

Publisher(s): Self Publishing, Mumbai, India

Year: 2022

Print run: 800

Language(s): English, Hindu, Urdu

Pages: 152

Size: 24 x 30,5 cm

Binding: Softcover in undyed, hand-spun Kora cotton

Edition:

Print: Naveen Printers, New Delhi, India

Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: India,2019-2020

ISBN:

Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh was made across several days and nights, over innumerable meals of biryani, warm embraces and tender exchanges. In the first week of January I joined the Shaheen Bagh movement as a protestor. As friendships were struck, and chai and biscuits shared, I began to make images.

This growing intimacy soon took on a tactile form of exchange. For every portrait I made, I created an identical Polaroid or “jadoo ka kaagaz” as they were playfully renamed, to give the women and children I photographed.

Some of the portraits have been layered with images of shawls and burqas worn by fellow protestors, to evoke the camaraderie and kinship that formed the essence of Shaheen Bagh. We soon had an impromptu photo studio as my documentation became a community exercise. As one woman cajoled her shy mother-in-law to have her picture made, “My mum saw my photo from yesterday and really wants you to make one of her too,” others brought their cousins and children in for family style pictures. Also included in the book are drawings made at the on-site crèche by the children who were waiting patiently while their mothers participated in the revolution.

From the women of Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter, the women of the Dandi March and the Chipko Movement, for those at the frontlines of India’s non-violent protests, this book is an act of remembrance, to preserve the powerful legacy of women at the forefront of historic revolutions.