All images from Desi Boys © Soham Gupta

Soham Gupta made his name capturing Kolkata’s unseen poor. Now his mood has softened, and the city’s youth movement has picked up pace

In Kolkata, young men crowd on roadsides, around food stalls, in shops, warehouses and arcades. From the tomb of Wajid Ali Shah – the last Nawab of the northern region of Awadh – in Metiabruz, to the bustle of Park Street and Mullick Bazar, men linger on motorbikes, smoke, laugh and flirt nervelessly, the same as youngsters the world over. One of them, Sahid, looks especially gleeful, his shirt removed to reveal a toned torso and a forearm tattoo sleeve (the word ‘Love’ is just visible). A woman places her ringed fingers on his bare chest, their easy smiles matching. Her eyes are relaxed, looking directly into the camera, while Sahid peers over his muscular right shoulder. His body, her face, are almost luminous against the night sky and worn paintwork of the thick railings behind them.

Sahid is an amateur bodybuilder, we learn from Soham Gupta’s Desi Boys journals. He has just started working in his father’s motorcycle garage in Tollygunge in south Kolkata, but often hangs out at the Safari Park in nearby Rabindra Sarobar – one of countless public areas or monuments named after Rabindranath Tagore in the city. “The girls are always dying to pose with me – and it always gives me a high,” Sahid says. After he has posed for Gupta, Sahid takes him to meet some of his friends nearby, boasting to them that he has just had his picture taken. “The others wanted to have their images made and I was suddenly engulfed in requests, from all sides,” Gupta writes. “And happily, I kept making images.”

These are the Desi Boys – Gupta’s friends, inspiration, subjects. They come from across this city of nearly 15 million, a swelling youth movement comprising both Muslims and Hindus belonging to a range of caste positions, including some Dalits. The idea for the project came about after Gupta was shooting a fashion editorial for New Delhi-based magazine Platform, where he was commissioned by Bharat Sikka. He began noticing what had previously blended into the background. Not just young men wearing fake designer clothing and dyeing their hair, but the way these sartorial choices constituted a new form of expression – the audacity with which they showed off, exchanged ideas, circulated pictures of each other, and saw their choices as distinctly subcultural. “There are different hints of masculinity in different places,” Gupta tells me. “They’re playing many different roles.”

Music is a key part of this new collective identity. Pune-born rapper MC Stan is an important touchpoint for these groups, Gupta says, with his lyrics describing life in – and beyond – India’s working and lower-class communities. The song Basti Ka Hasti is especially popular, its lyrics a combination of tribal hip-hop bravado and pride in a disadvantaged upbringing: “I’m a celebrity in the township!” he barks at one point. “MC Stan is very explicitly talking about the economic divide in India; he is the ultimate symbol for the Great Indian Dream,” Gupta explains. Another rapper crops up in Gupta’s journals, an amateur called MC Cidnapper. “He was not older than 20 – with a lock of golden hair up to his shoulder,” Gupta writes. The boy bounds over to him, excited that he might have his photograph taken and reciting a few lines from a new song about a girl who left him for a richer man.

New India

Desi Boys depicts a globalised India, but not in the way one might associate with tech-hubs, Silicon Valley CEOs and the country’s recent lunar landing, which prime minister Narendra Modi described as “mirror[ing] the aspirations and capabilities of 1.4 billion Indians”. Instead, the globalisation the Desi Boys experience relates mostly to liberalisation, social connectivity and employment – all of which have come about via mass mobile phone uptake in the past decade. In supremely competitive higher education and job markets, the arrival of the gig economy has offered new routes out of unemployment. The criss-crossing journeys these jobs involve add to Desi Boys’ sense of motion – of restlessness in a hyperactive city, of youthful excitement matched by its surroundings. “For many bourgeois and upper-class families, these boys are looked upon as a menace,” Gupta says. That, more than anything else, surely boosts their subcultural credentials.

Desi Boys was made in a specific Indian – and Kolkatan – context. Despite the fake Gucci clothes and Levi’s T-shirts, it is a simplification to assume that globalisation means simply emulating the west. There are other motifs alongside the preference for South Asian hip-hop. Several of Gupta’s encounters happen while searching for the next bowl of steaming biryani, while buildings’ pastel walls, DIY advertising boards and the boys’ sandals and coiffed hairstyles are distinctly Indian. The flash illuminates sections of the graffitied walls behind each of Gupta’s subjects. Exposed pipes and security grills speak to the thousands of vendors who line Kolkata’s daily markets. The youngsters smoke and flex their muscles, gestures whose universality as expressions of young masculinity give them an endearing edge. It is clear that there is a deep affection between artist and subject. “We are like brothers,” Gupta reflects.

The role of religion

But more than any visual cues, it is India’s tense political and religious climate that gives Desi Boys its texture. Led by Modi since 2014, the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has proposed a series of legislation which disadvantages India’s Muslim population. Passed in 2019, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) excluded Muslims from a fast-track for persecuted minorities to attain citizenship, while an accompanying amendment to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) similarly planned to exclude Muslims from an accelerated naturalisation process. Following widespread protests in early 2020, the NRC has yet to be implemented nationwide, with West Bengal among several states not under BJP control saying it will not enact the rulings. Cities with historically Muslim names have been renamed to reflect the BJP’s Hindutva ideology – Allahabad has become Prayagraj; Osmanabad is now officially Dharashiv, for example – and mob intimidation and violence against Muslims has become increasingly normalised.

The Desi Boys belong to both religions, and Kolkata’s political history plays an important part in the social harmony of the project. West Bengal was led by the communist Left Front from 1977 until 2011. “There’s no room for xenophobia in West Bengal – we grew up among too many hammers and sickles,” Gupta says. He recalls a discussion with a young man after he commented on his celebratory dress: “Eid is for the Muslims, but at the same time Eid is for everyone.” Gupta connects this environment to the willingness of the Desi Boys to express themselves, especially with styles that subvert a traditionally conservative culture. “Here, people feel safe to assert themselves, to go out in clothes that they like, to dye their hair. Desi Boys is a response against the xenophobic phase we’re going through,” he says.

Gupta describes Desi Boys’ subjects as “all subaltern in some way”. He draws a link with his 2017 project Angst, in which he made pictures of those at the foot of Kolkata’s social and caste ladders – the homeless and the hopeless. The word ‘subaltern’ resonates deeply in Kolkata, particularly in its adoption by late-20th-century postcolonial theory. Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee and Gayatri Spivak, founding members of the Subaltern Studies group, all attended Kolkata’s Presidency College (the latter two were also born in the city) before developing their ideas abroad. The group applied Antonio Gramsci’s idea of the subaltern to the marginalised populations whose experiences had been omitted from the history of India, especially narratives of how anti-imperial thought had developed into the independence movement. The subaltern is not simply someone who is poor, neglected or part of a system-based underclass. It means that they are excluded from the economic, social and cultural institutions of power within their colonial society, and – as Spivak queries – may also lack the means to articulate their condition if the language and norms of the coloniser have been impressed upon them.

“Desi Boys is a response against the xenophobic phase we’re going through”

Subaltern experiences

How does the subaltern relate to Gupta’s subjects – and his wider project? On the one hand, his photographs are the voice of subaltern experience. The way Gupta makes pictures is collaborative, but not prescriptive. The boys ask for their portraits for their WhatsApp pictures: “Come, take a group photo – of all of us! And you better send them to us! Not just one or two, but the entire set!” they tell him. His portraits perhaps circulate among his subjects more than they do in a western context, in which exploitative power dynamics risk being repeated. The image is networked, not static.

But still there is wariness around the ethics of display, particularly with Angst – the portraits at times shocking, raw and near-theatrical in their depiction of alterity and deprivation. The series was included in the 2019 Venice Biennale, the epitome of western art-world polish. But, as shown by the displacement of street vendors before the recent G20 Summit in New Delhi, the Indian establishment often chooses to look away from its own working classes. In this context, looking at people is recognising that they exist, even if it risks showing them as object not subject. To share images today is to engage with a specific moment in Indian history, to show integration, joy and modernity when openness seems on the wane. It is history without the responsibility of history; a record without the dryness of documentary.

When Gupta first titled Desi Boys, he was cautioned by critics whose advice he paraphrases in the Desi Boys journals. “How can you name it Desi Boys! You’re further marginalising the subaltern by calling this work that!” But Gupta’s photographs can be seen as a subaltern source – as history from below, with photography a new discourse. “Angst was made at a time when I was really emotionally down. It had all my anger in the work for a world that doesn’t care for people who are marginalised,” Gupta says. Desi Boys reflects a mood shift, but a way to invite his subjects into the image-making contract. “I’m more balanced now and it shows in the pictures,” Gupta continues. “They’re a celebration of life – my version of the truth that I am trying to portray.”

“In all the places I’ve lived, I’ve been involved and embedded in the community. But when I speak, I’ve never made an effort to have a softer accent; I’m a foreigner, and that’s what differentiates me”

AS: Which photographers were you specifically drawing inspiration from?

SB: Martin Parr, Paul Reas, Anna Fox, Paul Graham, and so on. I was using the same set-up as them, shooting in colour using a wide-angle lens and flash. It was kind of a visual experiment to understand how I saw things and respond to places, in an attempt to find a way of working that suited me, and how I might own that aesthetic. The flash gives you the opportunity to see the world differently, and to transform the most ordinary things into something exceptional. I was also discovering the work of Weegee and Diane Arbus, and then realised that I wanted to make photographs in black-and-white.

AS: Was your cinematic background also informing your work?

SB: I think that was more in terms of creating a sense of narrative, and learning how to direct the people that I was photographing – asking them to pose in a certain way, or to be as expressionless as possible, which I think I got from the films of Aki Kaurismäki or Robert Bresson. I wanted the kinds of expressions that make everything neutral and ambiguous, from which a certain tension can arise. There’s a lot of humour in that as well, but a humour that’s found in the ordinary. I didn’t want to give the viewer any certainties, but instead to see what the photographs did to them.

AS: Your new book, Ta-ra, draws from a decade’s worth of work made in Wales, from 2013 to 2023, so some of the photographs included were made during this very early period.

SB: Yes, the earliest pictures in Ta-ra are from that time, when I was still at uni trying to discover myself and my approach to photography. There’s a portrait in the book of a man with a dishevelled pompadour – that’s at the Porthcawl Elvis Festival. I took that picture in black-and-white, and was like, “Wow, this is where I want to take my work”.

AS: Earlier you mentioned Weegee and Diane Arbus. Nancy Newhall once referred to Weegee’s photographs as “extraordinary psychological documents”, and John Szarkowski described Arbus’ pictures as being “concerned with private rather than social realities, with psychological rather than visual coherence”. In Ta-ra, were you also more interested in exploring and emphasising the ‘psychological’ possibilities of photography, rather than the ‘social realities’?

SB: Well, that partially comes from the use of flash, but it also comes from always seeing a place with a degree of detachment, as a foreigner or otherwise. In all the places I’ve lived, I’ve been involved and embedded in the community. But when I speak, I’ve never made an effort to have a softer accent; I’m a foreigner, and that’s what differentiates me. I can have a familiarity with a place and its people, and at the same time always have a degree of detachment, because I don’t feel the need to hide my cultural background or references. It’s not about adapting to a place, it’s about using my own perspective to incorporate the elements of the place where I’ve chosen to live – what I like and dislike – into my own vision of it, and being able to be both affectionate and critical at the same time. Again, there’s an ambiguity there, in that you have both sides.

AS: What do you find particularly unique about Wales, and what are you specifically trying to express about the people and the place in Ta-ra?

SB: If you look at Chris Killip’s In Flagrante, at the people in those pictures, everything has been taken away from them, in front of their eyes, and you see their sense of desperation. They’re not letting things slip away from them – someone is coming and taking everything away, and they can’t do anything about it. Alternatively, in my images, I think a sense of numbness prevails. It’s like there’s nothing left to be taken away. With everything that’s happened in Wales and the UK – even since 2013, with the implementation of the austerity policies, and then Brexit and its consequences, and then the pandemic, and then the current economic crisis – what remains is this profound sense of numbness.

AS: Do you feel that this ‘numbness’ is a kind of psychological response or emotional defence mechanism, which is particularly prevalent here as the result of these repeated traumas?

SB: Yes. Also, when I was making the work, I myself was also going in and out of that same sensation of numbness. Even though these pictures were made specifically in Wales, I think this is something that is happening throughout the whole country, in working-class communities and elsewhere.

You’ve also moved to the UK from another country, in your case from the United States, so you must also see the social divisions that are here, and recognise how the class structure is always present, and so systematically embedded within this society. To me, this is unbearable; I can’t stand it. I try to treat everyone on the same level and with the same respect. I don’t make any differentiations if I speak with a lord or a person on the street, I treat them the same, and that’s how I expect to be treated. It’s just common sense. So I find the levels of injustice and inequality that exist here unbearable.

Of course, I don’t come from a perfect land. I come from a place where there is extreme polarisation – 40 per cent of the population of Argentina is now living in poverty. But when you think about the UK, and all of the policies that were implemented in the 1980s by Thatcher and the neo-liberal movement, you realise that they may have actually won by successfully destroying the sense of community in a lot of places. And that’s why there’s not just a numbness, but also a sense of profound solitude within this work.

AS: So Ta-ra is definitely more of a ‘psychological’ rather than a ’social’ document?

SB: I’m not trying to redefine the place itself, or impose my ideas onto these people – it is what it is – but these were the things that were driving me when I was making this work. As photographers we have to accept that our medium is subjective, that within our work there’s always the influence of who we are, how we feel, our cultural background, and everything else we bring to a place. I don’t actually know how much of my own psyche or psychological state is in there, but that happens all the time with photography – there’s always a degree to which we impose ourselves onto the people, places and things we photograph. We are working with the real, but in a way we are also borrowing these things for our own agenda. That’s why it took me so long to come to terms with this work, and to realise that the ideas behind it were actually very simple – that it’s about how I was discovering and responding to a place at the same time.

“This project has probably been the most difficult for me to edit – it took me a long time to realise that I was responding to the place emotionally, and that there was no need to over-conceptualise it beyond that”

AS: In ethical terms, how do you deal with this issue? How do you explain to the people you’re photographing that your own perspective or agenda will inevitably play a role in how they will be portrayed?

SB: Of course, it’s very difficult to explain all the intricacies of this to someone in a few minutes – and in this work in particular, many of my interactions with people were ephemeral encounters. I may have met them once and never encountered them again. But I always give people my contact details. For example, there’s one picture that I really love, of two girls – one of them is about 10 years old, and the other maybe 14. It’s one of my favourite pictures, but before doing anything with it, I got the contact details of their father, and I wrote him an email, and then another, and then another. I sent him the picture and said, “This is one the best pictures that I’ve ever made, and it would be great if you could give me a call or send me your number. I would love to talk with you, and give you a print.” And nothing – he never got in touch. If someone does get in touch I get back to them; if they want a print, I give it to them.

AS: During the making of this work, how did you decide where to photograph? What specifically were you looking for?

SB: This project came about because I was just shooting all the time, for the pleasure and sake of making pictures. I think it’s important to understand the place where you are. Like any photographer, I could be parachuted into a faraway place and find things that interest me, but I’m not driven by exoticism. I much prefer to be in the most ‘boring’ or familiar places, creatively that’s where I find a challenge. Trying to elevate something that is seemingly insignificant, and trying to identify remarkable things within the ordinary is a great challenge.

So really, it just depended on where I was, and what I was doing. Ta-ra is almost entirely made in the south of Wales, predominantly in towns and cities, rather than in rural places or the bucolic countryside. I really wasn’t trying to target a particular demographic, or certain class or anything. I was just looking for people who I was drawn to. But what I was always trying to do was to decontextualise everything, so that the context for each picture would be informed by the other photographs, the edit, and the sequence, in order to create an almost imaginary sort of space. This project has probably been the most difficult for me to edit – it took me a long time to realise that I was responding to the place emotionally, and that there was no need to over-conceptualise it beyond that. I started with 250 prints, and then slowly tried to make sense of it, refine it, and find the common factors that brought everything together. That way, the work itself collectively builds a place of its own.

AS: What do you think your Argentinian perspective brings to this place that might differ from that of British photographers?

SB: I always feel like I’m some kind of hybrid, because the education I received and so much of the information that I consumed came from the UK. But then I have this set of cultural references that comes from Latin America and Europe. So there is something different there, but I don’t know exactly what it is. Sometimes I feel – maybe you notice it too – that in the UK there is a certain lack of spontaneity within life in general. You have to constantly generate new adventures for yourself if you want to be challenged by what’s happening around you. When I was beginning to make this work, I felt this need to ‘feel alive’, so I went to what was supposed to be the most ‘notorious’ neighbourhood in Newport. And indeed there were people on the streets all the time, and things were spontaneously happening everywhere, and it was great – and, as in Argentina, there was a strong sense of community. When I was walking around, some kids came up to me, wanting me to take their picture, so I took it, and then immediately said, “Let’s go talk to your parents now.” So I went to talk to the parents, and they ended up inviting me into their houses. I made lots of pictures with these two families – in fact, that’s where I made the portrait of the baby who’s all wrapped up.

AS: You spent 10 years making this work. How did you know when the project was complete?

SB: Because I didn’t want to make any more pictures. Maybe I didn’t exhaust all the possibilities, but I felt like it was time to move on. As I said before, the reasons I ended up in Wales, and staying for so long, were chance and entirely circumstantial. It wasn’t something I’d planned, it was just the way my life organically happened. And I’ve reached a point now where I don’t want to make any more work here, but in a nice way; maybe that’s why the book is called Ta-ra, which is a local expression that is commonly used to say a friendly goodbye.

When you become part of a place, you learn to both love it and hate it, but over time more and more things have made it harder for me to live in the UK, and I don’t want to become any more cynical and angry – then it’s really not fair on the people I’m photographing. So I guess that I don’t want to make any more work here because I don’t feel the same way that I once did, and the project might become too dark, or turn into something that it wasn’t intended to be.

AS: Despite this, do you still feel an affection for or connection to Wales, having spent so long living and working there?

SB: Of course, all of my adult life happened here. It’s home – it’s so familiar to me now, it’s what I know, and it’s easy for me to make work here. The people have given me so much. To be honest, I’ve always been fighting with myself here, because I never wanted to make work specifically about Wales, and still I ended up doing it – twice in fact, considering that I also just published another book, The Dynamic, which is about a local Welsh newspaper.

I really do love the history here as well, especially considering that many of the biggest achievements of the UK’s working class started in Wales. The National Health Service was modelled on the Tredegar Workmen’s Medical Aid Society, which was set up by Welsh miners in the 19th century. Before that, you had the Chartist movement in the 1830s, and then you also have a lot of people who went to fight against Franco and fascism during the Spanish Civil War, then you have the Miners’ Strike [1984–85]. In certain communities there is still this strong sense of socialism, which people are born with. It’s by no means a socialist utopia, but those kinds of values are embedded within the culture and remain in the people. Even if they may have lost the battle, there is a sense of solidarity, openness and welcoming energy; it’s still here. So I will always love it, but I have to say ta-ra.

 “I went into this expecting to come out with a project about what recovery looks like… What I found was not a recovered woman, but someone who was still in the midst of dealing with these disorders”

Last month, one of Russell-Jeffrey’s photographs – from her 2021 photobook You Will Always Be Loved Even When You Feel Alone – was selected for this year’s Portrait of Britain award. The image is of Xanthe, the protagonist of the series and one of Russell-Jeffrey’s closest friends. Growing up, Xanthe struggled with disordered eating. “[Back then,] I didn’t quite understand it with great depth, or interrogate it in any capacity,” the photographer says. 

In 2021, while studying photography at Oxford Brookes University, Russell-Jeffrey decided to move in with Xanthe for two months. She wanted to capture how her friend was healing from adolescent trauma. “Naively, I went into this expecting to come out with a project about what recovery looks like… What I found was not a recovered woman, but someone who was still in the midst of dealing with these disorders,” Russell-Jeffrey says.

The pair spent two months together – day-in, day-out – and Russell-Jeffrey became aware of an “immense loneliness” that consumed Xanthe. This was surprising. “Xanthe is very outspoken, driven, and successful,” Russell-Jeffrey explains. They had grown up together as girls, but this was the first time they had spent a prolonged period of time together as adults. While they were living together, Xanthe experienced a bulimia relapse. “She’s not someone who welcomes pity, but I’d never seen her so defeated,” says Russell-Jeffrey. “I noticed that the problems she grappled with when she was 14 are just as prevalent today.”

The sequencing of You Will Always Be Loved Even When You Feel Alone echoes the reality of living with an eating disorder – moving through periods of binge eating, relapse, and healing. “Then the cycle begins again, of trying to stay in recovery, and this immense fatigue around that, because you’re never entirely free of it,” Russell-Jeffrey reflects. Alongside the images are Xanthe’s handwritten notes as well as letters from her family. Imbued with a striking vulnerability, these notes provide further insight into the complex process of dealing with trauma. 

What emerged was a series not just about recovery, but also friendship, and most crucially, care. Even though Russell-Jeffrey doesn’t appear in the images, her presence is palpable. The series feels like a dialogue of understanding and acceptance between two women that have grappled with many of the same issues. “It was almost a documentation of the small-scale things that you can do, the act of noticing, and not always over-analysing someone’s life but being attentive to it,” she says.

Due to the nature of the work, Russell-Jeffrey had to make certain ethical considerations. Xanthe was involved in every step of the process – while making the images, but also in the editing phases. When the project was finished, the photographer made sure that her friend was aware of all the implications of sharing it on the internet. Most importantly, the door was always left open to take it all down if she wanted to. 

Fortunately, “she loved it,” Russell-Jeffrey says. “It made her very emotional. She’s really proud of it as well, which she never thought she’d be able to feel.” The women have also grown closer through collaboration. “We went from having a friendship that we knew so well, to realising there’s so much we don’t know,” Russell-Jeffrey explains. “This was the first time I got to know her in loneliness, which is a rare thing.”

As an adult, it can be difficult to find the right words, or even the time, to properly care for friends as they experience hardship. Russell-Jeffrey’s project is a reminder that sometimes the best act of care is purely our presence. As she pledges in her introduction: “I shall be here not as a spectator to your pain or recovery like before, but as a hand to hold in the sunshine or on the cold bathroom floor, for you will always be loved even when you feel alone.”

sophie-jeffrey.com

In the five years since, Champions League Koulikoro has become a repository of images of the fan-champions of football in West Africa. Fofana has ventured away from the roof and into the streets, markets, and homes, focusing on different groups in society. “I’d spend days with workers from fishermen to mechanics or blacksmiths, to document how football shirts are worn as workwear, then focus on women or people in conflict zones or those going to the mosque,” Fofana explains. The initial concentration on football shirts became a gateway for a broader documentation of contemporary West Africa that has since been exhibited across the world, from Miami Art Week to London’s OOF Gallery – and at the African Biennale of Photography in Bamako where the work began.

The fervour for football in this part of the world runs deep – so deep that the myriad of shirts proclaiming an affinity with foreign teams is completely unremarkable. “People do not know much about West Africa in Europe, but they are among the greatest supporters for these European teams that I have seen in my entire life,” Fofana says. “The biggest fans of Real or Barca – they’re in Casablanca, they are in Bamako, they are in Dakar.” Once Fofana noticed the trend, documentation was the first priority. “It was interesting to reverse the gaze, because Africa looks a lot at Europe in terms of football,” he says. “Football gives concrete expression to all the aspirations of young people; there is always this desire to go to Europe, to play in Europe, to change your life.”

Fofana’s work builds on a long tradition of Malian street and portrait photography, known internationally through the work of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé. He cites Tobias Zielony’s portraits of overlooked youth as his main influence. Fofana’s work confounds the idea of gaze by turning attention back on those who so closely watch European teams (gazing, if you will) without the power or authority that the term has come to imply. This contrast between the European league – with all its associated fame and wealth – and its West African supporters is at the centre of Champions League Koulikoro.

The breadth of environments forced Fofana to adapt his working processes, impacting his style. Shooting in public spaces, often on the back of a motorbike driven by his cousin or in areas of heightened conflict, meant working quickly and using a more discreet camera or a phone. His subjects, whether market sellers or children, rarely engage with the camera. Some have their backs turned while others appear to just turned away, letting the focus fall on the shirts, crests and player surnames emblazoned across them.

“Football gives concrete expression to all the aspirations of young people; there is always this desire to go to Europe, to play in Europe, to change your life”

“In Africa, football is in the public space all the time,” he says. “People put their TVs outside to watch the games, creating what I call micro stadiums, and trash talk between neighbours and this social element is very important.” Football takes on another life that many beyond the continent have rarely paid attention to. Although fans globally are beginning to take notice of the African Cup of Nations, Fofana’s images tell outsiders that there is more to African football culture than the biannual tournament.

But it is the staged images shot away from the public sphere where Fofana truly foregrounds the fans. In one image, a young man stands in a yard while his two young nieces cling to his arms, proudly presenting a PSG shirt to the camera – echoing portraits announcing new signings at major clubs. The images often exhibit a playfulness, implying a reciprocal process between photographer and subject; the interest has moved beyond the shirt. Combining staged and unstaged imagery allows Fofana to show the impact of football across society, documenting the spectrum of fans while moving beyond the shirt and towards the individual.

There have always been star players, but in recent years it has been possible to talk of a whole new generation of African players in Europe. When Champions League Koulikoro began, Messi and Ronaldo shirts dominated, but homegrown players were also gaining prominence (particularly Senegal’s Mané and Egypt’s Salah when they were playing together at Liverpool.) Through football, Europe is familiar. Fans will often know the major cities, or even the geography of Spain or England, owing to the strength of their teams. Few in Europe share that level of knowledge about Africa. Champions League Koulikoro is “to show that European football exists and is being experienced not only in Europe, but also in Africa,” Fofana says. “It’s like ‘Hey, look at us, look at Africa too, look at what’s going on.’”

Over the next 18 months she made Between the Gates, and the images in the series speak clearly to her sense of separation and uncertainty during this time. Fragmented and dreamlike, they are, in some ways, unsettling. “I was alone a lot with my daughter,” Rowan remembers. “There’s many dark images of me standing at the back door just looking out into the yard, because when I finally had a bit of time to myself, there was nothing, no one there.”

Rowan’s husband was working long hours, her parents could not visit as often as she had hoped and, just outside her windows, visitors to the public garden surrounding her home peered in. The crowds began to feel like a physical manifestation of her insecurities, seemingly judging her failed attempts to become an ideal mother, wife and woman. “Looking back on the images now, there’s very little editing,” she says. “I knew that if they looked like a contradiction and didn’t quite make sense, then they belonged in the project, and were part of my days or nights of being a mother.

“I suppose it’s a little violent. But I suppose birth is violent too”

Despite this relaxed approach to editing – mirrored in the many photographs, sometimes presented Polaroid-style, that make up the work – there are shots that stand out to Rowan. A baby’s forearm fashioned from wax, dismembered trees, and weeds forcing their way through cracked pavements represent the boundary between the expected and the achievable. Dead branches hold unclear meaning, while furniture in the midst of being discarded embodies the fragmented elements of a home. Even so, today these images remind Rowan that, through destruction, something new can be made.

Perhaps the most symbolic photographs are those of the magnificent flowers that surrounded Rowan and her partner’s home. During the photographer’s first months as a mother, an ostensibly joyful time, the reality and chaos of which is often obscured, these explosions of life sat uncomfortably alongside broken flowerpots and grass trampled by visiting children. “I suppose it’s a little violent,” she reflects. “But I suppose birth is violent too.”

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“My work is strongly influenced by the experiences of my grandmother, who was physically and verbally abused, which consequently had repercussions on my entire family,” the photographer explains. “My artistic formation is deeply rooted in my southern Italian culture and family experiences, mirroring the patriarchal domination that has surrounded me since childhood.” Marino’s goal is to use this lived experience to create connections, building bridges between her own struggles and those of women the world over.

She began this work with 2022’s Paterfamilias, an autobiographical project that delved into the story of her grandmother, who “was beaten and denigrated by an authoritarian husband,” she describes. Marino says the project represents her “daunting past”, and the visual investigation explores the oppression of women in the domestic sphere, including the sense of conflict and oppression created by unsafe shelter. Her latest series offers a natural progression in theme, moving from her past to her aspirations for the future, and adopting a more chilling photographic approach. New Moons conjures a stronger sense of the supernatural than the previous work, including images that are eerie, almost ghostly, and weaving moments of girlhood with religious iconography to create a visual language akin to a Hollywood exorcism. These qualities are not incidental. Marino’s images represent different and fluctuating emotional states, she says, echoing writer Betty Friedan’s “problem that has no name” – the elusive, invisible and intangible feminine mystique.

“My work is strongly influenced by the experiences of my grandmother, who was physically and verbally abused, which consequently had repercussions on my entire family”

But in spite of the complex and sometimes painful subject matter, New Moons offers a message of hope. The title’s plural nods to the many ways in which womanhood can be experienced, encouraging solidarity across communities. The lunar phase from which the project takes its name also symbolises the closing of one cycle and the beginning of another, suggesting a new state of being for all. Marino hopes that the series can help people begin this new cycle, to find the courage to dismantle oppressive structures, and the strength to replace them with an egalitarian future. She describes the work as an incitement to social education, a medium through which she encourages viewers to learn more about the impact of male hegemony on women. Finally, she says, it is a reminder that in order to successfully fight against gender discrimination, all women must be united.

“New Moons is my beacon of light for anyone who has felt the weight of oppression,” Marino says. “It does not want to be a dormant hope, but expresses a certainty of redemption that occurs through the awakening of societal consciences on women’s conditions.”

“This photo series emerged from my deep emotional connection to the place,” the photographer says. “In this work, everything exists between the sunlight and the light from the sea.” Ferdous’ images capture what he describes as the beach’s Bengali essence. In contrast with western tourists, his subjects are elegantly dressed, with many women choosing saris and men donning suits to enjoy seaside walks and beach games. Sunbathing is not a common activity at Cox’s Bazar Beach, though some do take to the water, occasionally while still fully dressed.

“Having been cradled by both these worlds, I’ve come to cherish the unique offerings of each beach culture,” says Ferdous, who has spent much of the last decade living and working in New York. “Whether it’s the laid-back allure of the west or the bustling vibrancy of Bangladesh, both have sculpted unforgettable imprints on my heart, teaching me to relish the authentic flavours they unfurl.” It is, the photographer continues, the diversity of narratives represented by beaches worldwide that make them such mesmerising places.

[The series] prompts viewers to question: how often are images from the global south showcased in a light of leisure or happiness, rather than just catastrophe or conflict? – Ismail Ferdous

Ferdous’ connection to Cox’s Bazar Beach is reflected in the visual language of his images. Created across four years, always at midday during the winter months, the photographer hoped the pale, radiant light he chose would offer viewers something new. There was also, he admits, a selfish element to his decision: he sought to rebel against what he describes as monotonous photographic styles, and to satiate his own curiosity. 

Perhaps more importantly, Ferdous hoped that his wistful and in many ways idyllic style would offer a much-needed alternative to portrayals of the Global South through a western lens. “The series isn’t just a collection of aesthetically pleasing images; it carries a political undertone,” he explains. “It prompts viewers to question: how often are images from the Global South showcased in a light of leisure or happiness, rather than just catastrophe or conflict? Above all, this series seeks to uphold human dignity and celebrate humanity.”

It is this final goal that Ferdous aims to continue working towards using the 40,000 euros (£34,800) granted to him by the The Leica Oskar Barnack Award. He says the prize, which also includes Leica equipment valued at 10,000 euros (£8,700), has strengthened his belief in his work, ensured that future projects will come to fruition, and helped his career. He describes his place in a worldwide touring exhibition, offered to the award’s winning and shortlisted photographers, as an incredible honour, which has already led to increased attention.

Thirty years on from his first visit to Cox’s Bazar – and after many happy days subsequently spent there – Ferdous has noticed some changes to his beloved beach. Lifeguards have been introduced, and a growing interest in watersports has led to a thriving surf culture, particularly among younger visitors. However, in his eyes, the place remains unchanged. “Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh isn’t just a sandy retreat,” he says, “it’s a mosaic of traditions, an intersection of countless lives seeking both solace and sustenance.”

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Asselin will show the plates at an exhibition at the Ravestijn Gallery in Amsterdam in September, alongside publishing a photobook. “At the top of all this is the relationship between cars and the landscape. Cars have been one of the biggest factors in shaping the world around us,” Asselin says. “They not only affect it in terms of global warming, but also with roads. There is virtually no place in the world where you cannot see something related to the automotive industry.”

In 2015, US environmental regulators got a tip-off. Volkswagen was fitting software to its cars to cheat emissions tests. Vehicles fitted with these so-called ‘defeat devices’ churned out less toxic nitrogen oxide (NOx) under laboratory conditions than on the road. The case was christened ‘Dieselgate’. It swiftly escalated into one of the costliest corporate scandals in history. Almost all diesel cars that rolled off VW production lines between 2009 and 2015 – 11 million of them – were implicated. Audi, BMW, Renault, Fiat, Mercedes and others later admitted to lying in a similar way. A 2016 study found an eye-watering 97 per cent of all modern diesels emitted more NOx than the official limit. In other words: the cheating was systemic.

Asselin takes a bird’s-eye view on the scandal. True Colors’ second segment is filled with satellite images of decommissioned Dieselgate cars parked in “graveyards” across the US. The vehicles sit in their tens of thousands with a farm, a nuclear power station and an airport for scale. He assembles them in collages [pages 134–137] next to tiny circuit boards that housed the ‘defeat devices’. Pins, electrical grids and serial numbers are so small that they had to be captured with specialist cameras. These circuits echo the grids of cars pictured in the humongous car parks: “I liked the idea that such a small thing as this computer board can lead to thousands of cars parked in an airport.”

“Commercials and propaganda are the most powerful tools these companies have to make their status quo live as long as possible. We need to stop the bullshit”

Volkswagen has paid £26billion in legal fees and payouts to customers, but few people have gone to prison. Martin Winterkorn, the chief executive at the time, faces charges of fraud and stock market manipulation. He has not been sentenced. Former head of development Heinz-Jakob Neusser is in a similar situation. One lowerranking executive, Oliver Schmidt, is already out of jail. He served less than four years inside. Asselin’s project includes scans of arrest warrants for Winterkorn, Neusser and others, issued in 2017 by Interpol, the international policing organisation. The men are wanted in the US, but Germany rarely extradites its citizens to countries outside Europe. Schmidt went to prison because he was arrested at Miami airport trying to flee the US.

The photographer says the documents “show the gravity” of the situation. It is rare that a top CEO becomes a fugitive of justice. Asselin spent three years researching True Colors, and wants to make sure people do not dismiss it as the ideas of a “leftist, long-haired” artist. (The 49-year-old has a beard and a resplendent ponytail.) But on a more basic level, Asselin just wants you to know who to blame. He says too many documentary photographers “trade in subtext”, while he prefers a more direct method using company names and specific information. “Of course we as artists need to use aesthetics, and [those are] fundamental to trigger reflection in people… But do they really highlight the complexity of the issue? I don’t think so.”

This matter is sometimes complicated by corporations like HSBC, Pictet and Carmignac sponsoring awards. Every year, BMW gives an artist €10,000 for its arts patronage programme. Asselin applied for the 2023 edition, seeking to explore “the connection between their cars and the environmental issues we face today”. He stresses that the competition was “fierce”, and does not question the integrity of the jury: “However, my proposal didn’t fly.” He had better luck with his 2017 project, Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation, which focused on the US chemicals manufacturer Monsanto. It won the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award, and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. The project showed contaminated sites in Anniston, Alabama, where Monsanto had a factory, and portraits of the town’s residents. Many are sick from the toxic water. Others grieve relatives who died of chemical exposure. In one image, the nearby Choccolocco Creek runs red.

Now, the car industry is going electric. Volkswagen’s current CEO Thomas Schäfer recently said its new cars would all be “zero emissions” in a decade. The European Union recently agreed to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2035. Karima Delli, president of the EU’s transport committee, hailed it “a historic vote” and “a victory for our planet and our populations”. Asselin is not so sure. “Calling something ‘zero emissions’ is a very colonialist take,” he says, pointing to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where hundreds of thousands of Congolese people mine for cobalt used in electric car batteries, often on poverty wages and under brutal working conditions. In his 2023 book Cobalt Red, Harvard academic Siddharth Kara says it amounts to modern-day slavery.

In Chile, the majestic Atacama Desert is being dug up for lithium, another important component. This uses vast amounts of water in an already parched landscape. The Natural Resources Defense Council, a charity, reports that this causes severe ecological damage, and is “violating” Indigenous communities. Both cobalt and lithium mining are, of course, heavy on carbon emissions.

Asselin does not provide a solution. That is not the point – besides, who can? He even stresses that cars are an important part of modern life if used sparingly. He drives, but does not own a vehicle. “This is not a work against cars,” he says. Instead, his aim is to expose greenwashing and its exponents. Automotive industry bosses take the world’s great ecosystems and repackage them in glossy brochures to shift units. At the same time, they carve those landscapes up and cheat emissions tests with near impunity. “Commercials and propaganda are the most powerful tools these companies have to make their status quo live as long as possible,” he says. “We need to stop the bullshit.”

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Bozeman travelled to Elaine for the first time that August. His ongoing series, Out the E, is the result of his continued visits to the region. Elaine has a struggling economy, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the state and dismal education opportunities. But Bozeman’s photographs promote its community; the kinship of local people. An image of two girls, arms intertwined, is remarkably disarming. The pair stand awkwardly with their backs together, but they remain aware of their surroundings, relaxed but vigilant. The work is about Elaine’s kids, playing basketball in the sun, but also of future generations, more widely; Black children growing up in a world that should have moved on from the events of 1919. Instead, the country’s racial wounds, though reshaped, remain wide open.

In 2021, Bozeman started a new series, Failure to Appear, as a “reaction” to the work made in Elaine. “I realised that the reason why I went to Elaine was because I needed to be surrounded by Blackness,” he says. “I needed to make work about Black personhood and how my proximity to Black death had altered my psyche.”

“It’s not uncommon for Black families to not pass on legacies from their ancestors… I am not interested in reconciling these known and unknown histories, but a new context can be established by fusing them into each other”

Bozeman studies Black death, its representation in history and how, with cameras and new media, its images are disseminated and displayed more than ever. “I don’t think you can look at race in visual culture and not think about the presence of Black death,” he says. Failure to Appear marks a distinct stylistic and intellectual progression. Bozeman experiments with collage for the first time, layering and constructing images using ephemera from his parents’ archive, and stories he gathered from travelling the American South. “It’s not uncommon for Black families to not pass on legacies from their ancestors,” he says. “I am not interested in reconciling these known and unknown histories, but a new context can be established by fusing them into each other.”

Bozeman was nominated for Ones to Watch by Peggy Sue Amison, artistic director of East Wing gallery in Doha, who describes his work as “unforgettable”. “[He] exposes us to landscapes of inherited inequality amidst a relentless cycle of poverty,” she says, pointing out that many African American families are still living under these circumstances. But there is a musicality and joy to his work too. “Failure to Appear reads like treasured mixtapes or a jazz opus,” Amison says. “In a similar way to hearing such personal and often improvised compilations, I was left speechless.”

Since then, he has exhibited his work in the US, China and Germany, and his latest project, The Dog Sat Where We Parted, is getting him noticed. It was shown at Les Rencontres d’Arles last year, while Magnum photographer Myriam Boulos, who nominated Khattab for Ones to Watch, describes the work as “full of magic… poetic and personal”.

Despite having similar underlying themes, the project is markedly different to the work of Khattab’s student years. Shot during his enforced year of Egyptian national service as an army doctor in 2017, it is named after Antar, a stray dog with whom Khattab formed a close bond over five-mile walks across the desert, and it responds to his feelings of intense loneliness as a soldier.

Men in khaki sit in the scorched Egyptian desert, their faces mostly obscured. The images have an atmospheric quality – all wide skies and long shadows. They are set beside short, achingly honest verses of poetry: “I have been ridiculed/made fun of/beaten… I cried a lot.” The soldiers are unaware that Khattab is photographing them. The entire project was shot covertly, part of the artist’s bid to express his vulnerability through images. “Suddenly, my aspirations, dreams… looked just like everyone else’s. It was one of the greatest challenges of my life,” he writes.

“What I saw through my camera back then made me go deeper into myself, rather than continue photographing it… It doesn’t mean that I am no longer interested in current events, but it made me appreciate life more than ever before”

A more recent project, When Birds Sang Again, continues Khattab’s journey into an introspective mode. Shot during the pandemic, it explores the effects of human routines coming to a halt during lockdown – birds singing louder and grass growing longer – with images of his two pet cockatoos at home. “I wondered if it was just us staying by our windows longer. Hoping to hear a sound we got used to, all over again,” he writes in an accompanying text. 

Now, Khattab is developing a photobook of The Dog Sat Where We Parted, as well as working on a new project searching and surveying disappearing landscapes in Cairo, titled There Was a Valley Here Once. While he shies away from talking about future career goals, he says he has no wish to go back to photographing social unrest as in the revolutionary years, instead favouring work that is more personal.

“What I saw through my camera back then made me go deeper into myself, rather than continue photographing it,” he says. “It doesn’t mean that I am no longer interested in current events, but it made me appreciate life more than ever before.”