“My favourite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”
- Diane Arbus.

I had this overwhelming urge to dust off my 35mm film
camera, load a B&W roll in it, run to the streets, and make images.
Watching Diane Arbus’s work up close at Contemporary Calgary was a privilege
but it also felt like my birthright. I thought this was my teacher’s work hence
I deserved to see it. Staring at her portraits made me reflect on why I stopped
looking at master photographers’ work, such as Diane Arbus. I refrain from
seeing the works of Kurosawa, Satyajit, White, Koudelka, Fukase, Ballen,
Bresson, Moriyama, Capa, Frank, and just a handful more.

Because, this is my rabbit hole.

A dark, deep, and extraordinary hole that is so magically
treacherous to fall into. It’s spiritually impossible (almost), to get out from
the other end of the hole. I want to stay there and remain there because it
lets me forget about the mundane physical work I do to make a living. It lets
me forget all the worldly responsibilities, the sacred duties toward my family,
and any general and moral obligations. A blissful state of a different sort of
high and if it sounds like an addition, you are right! The places they visited,
the people they met, the things they saw, did, and didn’t, the techniques they
mastered - all this is merely superficial performance. The images they made are
pure rituals of wizardry, witchcraft, and sorcery. We see what they want us to
see, and maybe, just maybe rarely able to see something else.

It is a spiritual high because the masters directly
communicate with us, through their life’s work. You see… their mastery dies but
the masters stay immortals. Seeing their work, after experiencing all the ooh’s
and aaaah’s, always brings me to a place of familiarity. Its not really about
the thing that is being photographed, but it is to do with what the thing revealed
about the photographer. When I chose to make a picture of a discarded plastic cup,
in the moments leading up to the act of clicking the shutter, I made
uncountable choices of not taking images of a zillion billion things near that
plastic cup. The discarded plastic cup may or may not have its own story to
tell, but it certainly reveals a lot about its photographer. One secret and one
mystery at a time. Every single image, good or bad, mediocre or masterpiece, I
get to know a bit more, about myself.

Unfortunately, not all makers will be able to handle the fragments
of truths they have been amassing. Like in meditation, the first several years
of practice discloses only the darkest, dirtiest, disgusting, and bottomless
thoughts and feelings. But the secret is to be persistent and continue the practice
– by not giving up on the progression because the results are not exactly what
you wanted it to be. It is beyond these uglies, the truth lingers.

After several years of denying the masters, I finally let
them in. Into my conscience and consciousness. Whether or not I will get out of
the other end of the rabbit hole – the spiraling time will tell and have it’s
say.

‘Letters to a Stranger’

Santosh Korthiwada, 2023