The F.E. Choudhry Gallery: A Story of Normalcy, or of Displacement?

Nadeem Omar

As we think of floods and of displacement once again, this photographs from F.E. Chaudhry of the 1950 flood depicts Chacha‘s ability to turn a news story into a human story.

A narrative photograph of the Punjabi victims of the 1950 flood in the wake of which nearly three thousands perished. Their villages and homes submerged, a family has taken refuge in a railway bogey, which serves as a kitchen as well as shelter from the blistering heat.

Each individual in the picture, though part of a single family with elderly heads of household and their children, is lost in his or her own personal world. With little interaction among them, they appear to be privately counting and mourning their losses.

The young man while preparing food on the railway wagon apprehensively looks at the sky as if searching for the clouds that drowned their village and their lives. Except for the elderly woman who looks into the camera, the other younger women shield themselves from the prying eyes of the cameraman.

The story telling quality of the photograph lies precisely in the fact that each individual character in the photograph is revealing his or her own story without compromising on the overall composition or the melancholic effect of the image.

Click here for the F.E. Choudhry Gallery at ATP.

This post was first published on ATP on May 14, 2008.