In Confrontation With The Apparent - Swapan Parekh
India -
Emaho caught up with celebrated Indian Photographer Swapan Parekh who is widely acclaimed for having brought the documentary aesthetic to Indian advertising photography, his personal works remained rooted in the terrain of black-and-white photography, little of which has been seen in India.
Kishor Parekh, your father, was a pioneer photojournalist. What was his role in your becoming a photographer?
It was the untimely death of my father, the legendary photojournalist Kishor Parekh that threw me into this arena. I was 16 then, studying science and had never really picked up a camera. And like all young sons believed, their dads, their heroes, aren’t supposed to die. I did not even know how to mourn his sudden passing away like this. I remember going and opening his cupboard, burying my head in his clothes with the yearning to smell him one last time and take a pledge, that I want to be a photographer thereon. Till today I hear stories about how he revolutionised Indian reportage photography in the 1960’s; and though he and I are very different kind of photographers, there is so much I would have liked to share with him. Maybe the only consolation is, this early abandonment perhaps helped me etch my own identity, growing outside the shadow of his colossal presence.
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