Saturday, 26 April 2025
Saturday, 26 April 2025
Somenath Mukhopadhyay picked up a camera 30 years ago. And last week the Birbhum, West Bengal-based photographer earned a special mention under the sub-category of Ramki Sreenivasan Conservation at the Nature inFocus Photography Awards.
Mukhopadhyay’s shot was of a woman offering Chhath Puja in the Yamuna near Delhi, the river’s water white with foam.
He clicked the image in November 2019.
Mukhopadhyay’s journey to capture Yamuna river began when he saw a photograph taken by a colleague.
“I was shocked to see the amount of froth in the river. After that, I started collecting information to capture my own series,” he told The Telegraph Online.
“I travelled to the Yamuna near Delhi back in 2019 during Chhath Puja. When I first reached there the police did not allow me to go near the river as there was a huge crowd but I knew they were preventing me so that I could not take the pollution picture. However, somehow I managed to make my way through the crowd and capture some of the images. One of the images is this, which won me the recognition. It also won me the BarTur photo award.”
The sacred Yamuna is one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Over the years, unchecked industrial waste, sewage, and agricultural runoff have severely contaminated its waters. The river’s pollution has always been a point of political debate in the national capital.
“I deliberately shot the photograph at that time,” Mukhopadhyay, 57, explains.
“There are several effects of this pollution on human, agricultural and aquatic health. I thought this particular image would be revealing a snapshot describing the whole effect in one particular shot. The title of my image is ‘Sinner’. Now this is a great irony as to who is the sinner over here. The person in the image who is praying and doing the rituals is she or he the sinner or are we the people who failed to protect the river? In the name of religion we are polluting our river sources. Now also, during the Khumbh Mela, the water is being polluted everywhere and all this is happening in the name of religion, worship and rituals. People think all this is divinity, but it is not so.”
The Nature inFocus Photography Awards sheds a light on crucial conservation stories that are shown through powerful images and also raise awareness.
Mukhopadhyay continues to work on similar projects.
“Environment, river pollution and conservation are some of my favourite subjects,” he said. “At present, I am working on riverbank erosion along the Ganga. I travelled to a large part of the riverbank from Murshidabad to Malda.”
