CK Vijayakumar

CK Vijayakumar is a photojournalist and multimedia producer currently based out of Bangalore, India. When we met in mid-2020 he was working on a project about the waste managers in Bangalore – how they affected by the coronavirus and their position in a caste based society. His work is concerned with the plight of people as they endeavour to live with, or under – in his own words – power, war, nationalism, caste, capitalism and poverty.

Originally a software developer, it was the spirit of travel, and a discover of people as he travelled, that compelled him to begin documenting the human plight with his camera.

How did you get started in photography?

In 2009 I travelled from India to Houston, Texas for work as a software developer. For the first time in my life I started making enough money to have some disposable income. I bought my first car and started driving around the southern states. Everything I saw looked very new and interesting as it does for anyone in a new country and a new culture. Later I bought a used DSLR from a friend and started photographing anything that looked interesting during my drives. This became an obsession for a couple of years. 

I then happened to watch a French documentary film about Robert Frank's book The Americans. Robert Frank drove around America to make this iconic book. This documentary planted the idea in my head that I could also perhaps do that kind of work. So I decided to save up and go to school to study documentary photography - which I did in 2013.

I love the image of you driving around, which seems such an American way to pass time. The element of discovery has a certain romance attached to it. What in particular about that time, the things you saw, and the documentary drew you into taking photos?

It's very hard to articulate why someone likes to be on the road and just looking at things. I am going to list out a few reasons that may have drawn me into taking photos.

 Watching the landscape with the gas stations, diners, pick-up trucks, factories, school buses, bars, etc., roll past through the car windshield was almost like watching a movie. A Hollywood film perhaps, like the ones I grew up on.

It may have been interesting because it looked different. I grew up in urban India, so anything outside of that setting looked interesting to me. Rural America was fascinating, way grittier than I had imagined. And also when I imagined America, it wasn't rural America that I typically imagined. It was mostly New York or the beaches of Los Angeles. 

Watching life in different spaces gave me new perspectives through which to see my own life. 

When I went home and looked at the photos out of context they took on a life of their own. As time passed on, the memories of the travel faded but the photographs remained the same – more and more detached from their original temporal context. I found this aspect of photographs enchanting. 

And now you are back in India and photographing there,

Right

What has captured your attention back at home?

I moved back to India in 2017 and I did a master's with a concentration in documentary photography. I started using my photography to document the social landscape. I felt that it could be a good tool for talking about social issues. India, I felt, was dealing with more social issues than the US. My mother's health was also deteriorating, so I decided to move back.

After I moved back I was initially photographing Chennai - it was interesting to be back in a city that I grew up in after twelve years - eight of which were in the US. Then I got interested in issues of statelessness with the migration of Rohingyas and the NRC (National Register of Citizens) process that left four-million people stateless in the state of Assam. I was also hearing a lot of news about caste atrocities against Dalit people in India. I too am Dalit, but a privileged Dalit, and I got deep in to Dalit issues from the social justice angle as well as from the angle of personal identity. My current project deals with Dalit issues.

I was really moved by your photos of people in Assam, and the way you show folks living their everyday lives, but in such a way that they look like they are at the edge of the world. And the photos of Dallit refuse collectors that you showed during your residency – how intimately they work with the refuse, and how the men in the photos seem to be in some form of constant danger, of machines, or contamination, it’s everyday stuff but also shocking.

How did you go about making a relationship with the Dallit refuse collectors, and the Dallit population in general? Did you already have ideas about the images you were looking for?

There was a national lockdown that lasted about two months until May 2020 and it was quite frustrating to be stuck inside for that long, especially as a photographer. I was thinking about what I could do that was relevant. The only people that I saw on the road during the pandemic were the waste collectors. That's when I decided to focus on them. There were other reasons I was interested in them. I am a Dalit too and I've been wanting to do a project on this topic since I moved back to India in 2017. I noticed a lot of news about atrocities against Dalits after I got back. Apparently three Dalit women are raped every day in India, among many other forms daily oppression they face. 

I, however, grew up as a privileged Dalit and was sheltered by my parents who had managed to move up the class ladder. They did not tell me that we were Dalit until I was 18 and had to apply for college. Dalits have affirmative action in higher education in India and I made use of it. My parents were ashamed of that part of their identity and wanted to protect me from it, and until 2017 I never really talked about it and actively hid that part of my identity from people around me. 

For the last few years I have felt the need to be open about my identity and make work about the caste issue in India. I have been following the issue since then and reading a lot about it. It all came together finally in May 2020 when I started this project. 

I just went up to them one morning during the lockdown and told them that I was interested in what they were going through during the pandemic. I told them I would like to document them. They were very welcoming of that idea. Initially they thought that I was a TV news reporter and started giving me a litany of grievances. It took me some time to explain to them the kind of documentation I was doing. Some of them even wondered what kind of remuneration they would get from participating. I had to tell them that I could not give them anything. I also had to explain that the possibility of change in their circumstances with documentary work was very low. They were fine with everything and at this point we are all just good friends. 

How does documentary work affect the circumstances of people? I know you have your own production company Stray Dogs Media – Do you hope that it will make a difference somehow?

I think documentary work is important in creating awareness that may eventually lead to change. Most documentarians working on social issues are hoping for change. However when I work with people I make it quite clear to them that they may not see any change in their lifetime. Most people usually understand that. Some don't. The first person I worked with in this current project asked me on day one - "What's in it for me?" I told him nothing immediate but hopefully something in the long run. And he was perfectly fine with it. 

My partner and I started "Stray Dogs Media" to make documentary style videos for organizations that work in the development sector. These videos are useful to them as a documentation of their own work. It is also used by them to get more funding for their cause. It also helps us practice our craft and fund our own independent documentation work. 

See more of CK’s photos on his website ckvkphotos.com or to read more about Stray Dogs Media visit straydogsmedia.com