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Viswanath
Freelance cameraman/painter, lives and works in Bangalore, India
The endeavour in these works is to portray the clear life style of Baiga tribe through a 19th century printing technique i.e. Gum bichromate process.
Gum bichromate process
This process is based upon the discovery that the potassium bichromate with a colloid (gum Arabic) and a water-soluble pigment forms a light sensitive emulsion that can be brushed onto a paper substratum (or on any suitable surface), exposed through a negative to sun light, and developed in plain water. Where light strikes, the emulsion hardens and remains. Unexposed areas do not harden, and so during development they are washed off, and only the hardened image remains on the surface, after a series of delicate water washes.
These Gum bichromate prints are the result of the preliminary study undertaken during the course of research for a documentary on Baiga in Chattisgarh, India.
Baiga
The Baigas are the second largest group of indigenous people in Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. They have lived in the forest areas of khana (‘Dandakaranya’ of the great epic Ramayana), the districts of Mandla, Balaghat, Bilaspur and Rajnandgaon since immemorial.time. According to local legends the very first Baiga was born to the Mother goddess on the Hill of Elephants and was named ‘Nanga Baiga’. Since then they have always been referred to as 'Sons and Daughters of Mother Earth'.
The Baigas are gentle and peaceful tribes who have mostly preferred to retreat to remote and sometimes rather inhospitable terranes, rather than being engulfed with modern ways of life. [...]
fig. I xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx fig. II xxxxxxx fig. III
[...] There is hardly any transportation except an occasional jeep or a tractor between some hilly areas where they live. There are foot tracks, in some places a coarse road full of boulders, stones and thorns. Only a few houses are seen here and there. Peoples’ apparels are very simple; they just wrap themselves in a raw cloth. Baiga men are recognized generally by the tuft of their hair and the Baigins (tribal women), by their tattooed skin.
For the Baiga, the Bewar or slash and burn cultivation is an essential part of their identity. Their respect and reverence to the mother earth does not allow them to use the plough. They burn dried leaves and tree boughs on the land marked previously and cultivate on the ashes. This only burnt area nourishes their life for three years. After a period of three years they move to a different place in the surrounding forest. Correspondingly, they always keep on wandering all over the forest. At the time of returning to the place where they cultivated fifteen – twenty years ago, in the same Bewar region, they see a much more densely grown up forest. They have also adopted Bewar cultivation as a symbol of their tribe, differentiating them from others.
However the hardships that many of them now face are seriously beginning to force them to abandon this traditional way of life that they really do not want to forsake.
Rich deposits of Bauxite have been found in the hills extending from Orissa to Chattisgarh. It is proposed to mine the entire eastern Bauxite Belt from Orissa to Chattisgarh. The traditional homelands of the Baigas have been leased out to a mining company- a step that will probably leave the land barren and uncultivable.
Baigas, a community that refuses to use the plough will now find their lands opened up, torn apart and blasted by the mines.
So far Baigas are not exposed to a modern technological society.
They are not used to a matchbox until now; instead, they use flint, bamboo sticks and cotton to ignite the fire. They distil spirituous liquor from a forest flower by using mud pots under a running stream. Their crude apparatus looks like a modern laboratory retort. However there is no trace of electricity or communication medium as such.
Since the province has extremely varied Climatic conditions, the body, in summer season, becomes like a glowing charcoal, Hot air flings all over the place. Even though their life style is so hard they do not feel life a burden since they do not crave for physical pleasures. The natives walk miles together to the village, ‘Tharegaon’ for essential needs and for the weekly fair. At the time of transaction, the shopkeepers offer the matchbox free of cost as a special attraction, to lure them to a modern way of life. Young girl with a baby wrapped up on her back is a common scene. They live freely from moment to moment without any conventional constraints.
To convey the essence of Baiga life, the Gum bichromate printing technique has been opted because of its unusual image building quality, which involves natural resources for its unique process.
This engrossing process between darkness and light; hardening and dissolving; drying up and dampening looks like an allegorical representation of the life process itself.
Confronted by the present tendency in the world of art of adopting techniques that are trendy, I have tried to put forward that the time-tested Gum bichromate process is still relevant and contemporary.
Apart from mechanical reproduction, the image created through this technique has distinct characteristics. This alone communicates as a language and unlocks the infinite possibilities inherent.
This as a kind of collaborative painting and Photography adds a new dimension to the expressed concept, and surpasses the usual documentation quality of photography.
On a single plane, this amalgamation documents simultaneously the authentic adivasis as they ‘live today’ and suggests powerfully the ‘history’ of several centuries. This indeed is the soul of these works.
fig. I-III
Baiga Series
Gum bichromate prints on paper
Size: 19 x 28 cm
