Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Carsten Bockermann: The Sunderbans

Photo © Carsten Bockermann-All Rights Reserved

Carsten Bockermann is a German photographer who specializes in photographing everyday life in different cultures around the world using a combination of direct reportage and visually interpretative style. He has photographed in West Bengal as well and, as I just returned from Kolkata, I thought I'd feature his work on the Sunderbans.

The Sunderbans is located at the southern tip of West Bengal, and is a stretch of impenetrable mangrove forest of great size and bio-diversity. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Sunderbans is a vast area covering 4264 square kilometers in India. The area is intersected by a complex network of tidal waterways, mudflats and small islands of salt-tolerant mangrove forests.

While I have already featured Carsten's photo essay on the Ambassador cars on this blog, you may want to revisit his photographs on his website. These are the type of cars that form Kolkata's yellow cabs fleet...literally thousands of them can be seen on its streets on any given day. Battered, painted over many times, and literally held together with strings, these taxis are key to Kolkata's commuters.

A word of caution to those who are 6 feet tall and above...do not sit in the front with the driver. 

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