Lynn Johnson and Jen Saffron: The Koraput Survivors Project

Abstract

707 Penn Gallery Pittsburgh July 12-September 1, 2013 In 2008, in the state of Odisha in eastern India, approximately five hundred Christians were driven from their homes; many were killed, and their village was destroyed by armed Hindu extremists acting on a rising tide of religious and social intolerance. The villagers relocated to Koraput where, led by Pastor Debendra Singh, they have struggled to rebuild their lives and their community. (1) Unlikely circumstances brought photographer Lynn Johnson into contact with this community. Johnson, a photojournalist based in Pittsburgh, has taken on such issues as landmines, disease, and threatened languages, and in 2011 was working on assignment for National Geographic: follming the paths said to have been taken by Christ's apostles after his death. The assignment eventually took her to India where Thomas the Apostle had, according to tradition, settled in Kerala. (2) When sonic of Johnson's contacts in India were informed of her assignment, she was advised that she should also visit the resettled community in Koraput, where she traveled and was deeply moved by what she witnessed and learned. As Johnson heard about the victimization and continuing tribulations of this community, she wanted to do something to help and, feeling that she needed a collalmrator, reached out to photographer, activist, and educator jen Saffron, who agreed to join her. Together with Singh as their intermediary in Koraput, they developed The liorahul Survivors Prujed with the goal of reporting on as well as attempting to alleviate the plight of the survivors. In this collaborative project, Johnson is the primary photographer and Saffron the writer and organizer, while also contributing photographs. The Pittsburgh exhibition was a manifestation of this multifaceted effort. The show itself was not a single series but rather had a fragmentary quality, with suites of photographs representing aspects of the community at different times. Photographs shot by Johnson during her initial visit to Koraput were printed in large format and hung from the ceiling, in a hexagonal formation. These included images of people attired in frayed clothing, either posed or going about their lives in impoverished interiors, as well as photographs of their religions ceremonies. Given the size and central placement of the images, they served to represent the genesis of the project, while establishing some sense of the living conditions of the survivors and their commitment to religious practice. The predominant aspect of the exhibition was a series of fifty-one smaller black-and-white prints that encircled the gallery--unattributed to any individual, although about half were shot by Johnson and half by Saffron. All are luminous images filled with observed detail, and they appear to have been selected and sequenced for narrative weight. The photographs were taken in March 2012 when Johnson returned to Koraput accompanied by Saffron, and the photographs are more documentary and ethnographic than photojournalistie, conveying a broad impression of the society and everyday life conditions. (Since then, the state of Odisha has made it illegal to photograph tribal people a vague prohibition that is sometimes interpreted as including the typically impoverished untouchable caste, which includes the Koraput survivors.) The images expand upon Johnson's initial color photographs and consist of portraits in spare interiors, several scenes of religious observance and ceremony, and many shots of the survivors' difficult living and working environments. In one photograph, people sleep huddled together on a floor, while in another, a field of raw sewage lies in close proximity to living quarters. Throughout, people labor to provide for themselves. Women are seen both bearing the brunt of childcare and domestic duties and working side by side with the men on agricultural and construction projects. …