Reading Dead Sea

And the immense possibilities it offers.

Mumbai || Paused’s Dead Sea is not a one time read. As in you can go cover to cover in 5 minutes but that is just the first time. It is a quick read but you can’t read it just once. You will keep coming back to it. Let’s say, it is a baar-baar-dekho book!

Gopal is known for taking his readers through streets, towns, cities, and states through his photographs. His candid shots, mean candid. His photographs give a sense that he lived the moment, he understood its story and then carefully with great love and respect for the subject—people, wall, graffiti, statues, door, window, road, sea, dog, cat, fish, cow (everything)—captured the shot in his camera.

He remains true to his style in Dead Sea. It is from a 2011 shoot, ‘when the Sri Lankan fired on Indian boats near the Palk Strait, leading to at least two documented fishermen deaths that year and triggering protests in Tamil Nadu’. The book captures Indian fishermen, their families, and Sri Lankan fishermen who were caught crossing maritime borders in search of a decent haul.

Dead Sea is a coffee table book sans the pretensions (or the cost). Dead Sea is an album—the one’s where you flip the pages slowly (and not scroll furiously), feel the print (and not the screen), and run your hand over the photos in the hope that some of its story will flow into you.

And when you revisit the album and carefully look at the photographs you will find some details that you missed the last time you flipped through the book.

The segments have brief introductions. The photographs do not have captions. I guess the whole book has 100 words, give or take. So the first time you flip through the book, questions such as ‘why’ ‘how do I know what is what’ ‘who is who’ pop up.

And then the pop pops. So when you read a book, a movie goes on in your head, right. With characters, locations, sun, snow, rain, light, dark, costumes— the works. Similarly, when you flip through Dead Sea and stay with the photos, a script gets written inside that very head of yours.

As in you know the big picture, but no captions means it is open to your own little stories. And I absolutely loved the experience.

For instance, my story with this photo would be:-

The Tattooed Twins

Did the twins (aren’t they?) get tattoo-ed together? The one in the front is the smarter one and gives off Prithviraj¹ vibe. The one at the back reminds me of Boobly². Both love the gym. The smarter one has a bolder, yet relatively simple design. Boobly has a little less bold, yet elaborate design. Was he trying to make up for something he thought he didn’t have? The dimples are absolutely to die for!

The brothers perhaps went to the tattoo parlour together in one of those moments of deep brotherly love, that is usually followed by deep regret but here they seem happy enough to pose. Or was it a conscious decision to make identification easier were they to be shot crossing the boundaries on one of their fishing outings.

Naah! It must be the former. The eyes and smile say it all.

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I love good photographs (and photography). I bought a D 90 almost 20 years ago when it cost our combined three months salary! So ordering the book was a no brainer. You can DM Mumbai || Paused for your own copy.

1. The Mallu actor.

2. From Kapoor and Sons.