Editor's Note
In an age of flux, the time-swallowing vortex of information overload, and the curse of instant familiarity, it is quietly meditative, perhaps tangibly startling even, to be introduced to a life of elsewhereness.
Ayan Biswas offers just this in his photographic essay chronicling the lives of an old couple of a certain tradition living in the remotest corner of Ladakh—including the last potter of a given earthenware form wedded to the textures and circadian rhythms of the earth. Biswas is empathetic in his language—both written and photographic. Crucially, he never intrudes but plays the role of an observer. His photographic eye sees evidence of the seasons unfurling; his gaze captures the echoes that reverberate between silences. As a result, this essay plays the role of both chronicler and insider—bound as much to the act of archiving as a means to remembering, as to the wonder of these lives being lived out in remote contentment.
Biswas’s camera treads the contours of these lives, unobtrusive, attentive. The house pets stumble about at dawn. A leaf erupts into its private continent of prairies and tributaries. A cherished photograph lingers on a window, perhaps in wait. An old hand, beautiful with wrinkles, with the passage of time, attends to the craft of creating things. Seasons change. Earthenware is born. Things wither away. Things are born, in the radiance of summer, in the fierce embrace of winter.
This family, and Biswas, offers a new way of life—one of less and awareness. One where your body moves in accordance with the seasons. One where time is a fragment, life part of a continuum. One of old earth and human skin.
‘Living with the Last Potter’ deserves to be read, and witnessed, slowly. As is any worthwhile life story, truth be told.
— Siddharth Dasgupta
The Bombay Literary Magazine
LIVING WITH the LAST POTTER (2021 – Ongoing)
Corded ceramics (Ed: a rudimentary form of earthenware pottery, used primarily for the storage and cooking of food) has been one of the fundamental materials for understanding chronologies and cultural interactions. The story of Ladakh pottery craft belongs to the time period of King Gyalpo Namgyal, when the people of Likir village were bestowed with the responsibility of pottery.
While documenting the existence of this art form in Ladakh, I started living with an old couple, also known to be the last Ladakhi potter family fostering the ancient technique and its earthy connections. Likir was once known to be the potters’ village as every house held traces of pottery. Now, we are left with the last potter named Lamchung Tsepail—who has spent over 50 years of his life making pots and is still practicing this art form. His son Rigzen has been working with clay for over 15 years now, finding a way to involve the locals and connecting with organisations like NID to conduct various workshops in the village—all in a bid to revive this art form.
For almost a season I kept my camera aside, and started working with the family—helping them out in their daily chores. What followed was an act of observation, of being involved in the process of what makes them who they are. I would call Soman Dolma, the wife of the potter, as ‘Amaley’. It means mother in Ladakhi. I slowly started taking photographs of the old couple after having spent more than a year with them. The day started with Amaley spreading the incense all around the house and then they would share a cup of tea together inside the kitchen, before she would take the cows for grazing.
They treated work with the reverence of an art form, a medium of self-expression and a way to make sense of their respective emotions that defined their lives. They could sense the birth of summer from the scent that swirled in the breeze from soil getting watered for the first time after months of dry winters. And just by gazing at the loose dirt, they could tell how soft and fat the potatoes had grown underground. The silence they shared, carried the weight of the things they saw in each other and experienced together.
These images that developed over time portray a deeper understanding of the Ladakhi inhabitants and their relationship with the land, the spaces surrounding their lives. How the objects in their day-to-day life define their identity, emotions. It made me question my existence and the very ideas of home and belonging.
This ongoing project, which I visualise in the form of a photo book, explores the roots of their practice, tales of provenance, and of the landscapes they carried within.
Acknowledgments
Cover Banner Photograph: Ayan Biswas/ Banner Design & Photography + Narrative Editing: Siddharth Dasgupta
Author | AYAN BISWAS
AYAN BISWAS is an independent documentary photographer based in Ladakh, India. His practice involves visually representing the coexistence of indigenous people with the spaces they inhabit and their lived experiences. He is invested in the art of making photographs that show vignettes of their lives, often employing banal objects and ordinary moments that define their identity. For the last few years, Biswas has been exploring how the landscape and the surrounding elements can be used as a medium in the aspects of image making. That’s how he started working with the community to teach various historical printing techniques—as a means to build a photographic archive.
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