It’s South Asian Heritage Month – and The Wick is celebrating by continuing to champion the work of artists of South Asian heritage, an underrepresented but dynamic part of the arts scene in the UK.

Formerly an award-winning photojournalist, Kalpesh Lathigra’s series A Democratic Portrait began after a United Nations assignment in 2013 to document the Za’atari, a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. “Back then, I was beginning to question how I take pictures, what images of refugees mean, and how they are used and read.” Lathigra told the British Journal of Photography. “Documenting hard news was my job, but I had no control over the usage, and it was an issue for me that images could be used as propaganda. As photographers, our subjectivity is critical and realising this eventually pulled me away from photojournalism.“

A Democratic Portrait saw Lathigra shift away from photojournalism towards the fertile space in between documentary and fiction, working with both found and staged images. A Democratic Portrait is shot with a Polaroid Passport Camera and Fuji FP 100C film (which is no longer made) and comprises more than 50 passport photographs of major cultural figures, celebrities, and politicians, as well as refugees, friends, family and people from marginalized communities. It unfolds an arresting story about portrait photography’s relationship with power,
London-based Lathigra is currently a Senior Lecturer at the London College of Communication and continues to create editorial and commercial work alongside his artistic projects.

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