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Harsha Vadlamani Photojournalist, Documentary Photographer and Filmmaker in India

The view struck me. I hoped the GPS data from my new camera would confirm if it’s what I thought it was. Later when I found that the GPS data wasn’t updated since take-off, I turned to the internet. Retracing the flight’s path from Hyderabad to Ahmedabad that February morning and approximating the location at the time the photo was taken, I was convinced my guess was right. I was looking at the backwaters of the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada river.

Later when I got to learn that the dam’s construction was declared complete, all of its gates closed and set for inauguration, I wanted to go. To travel to the places I had seen only from so high up above and witness what the dam, one of India’s most controversial development projects ever, done to people living along the river. Travelling through the submergence zone in the Dhar, Khargone, Alirajpur and Barwani districts of Madhya Pradesh a few days before the inauguration on September 17, I found that thousands continue to live dangerously close to the rising backwaters, in the absence of proper resettlement and rehabilitation measures.

Harsha Vadlamani Photojournalist, Documentary Photographer and Filmmaker in India

A jeep carrying Adivasis up the hill towards Chandankhedi, Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, passes through rushing backwaters of the Sardar Sarovar Dam’s reservoir. All gates of the controversial dam on the river Narmada have been closed together for the first time on June 17, leading to gradual submergence of areas upstream. September 11, 2017.

My text and photographs appeared in the Caravan magazine on the day of the dam’s inauguration.

More photographs on my website here.

The Caravan Magazine, August 2017.

I recently had the opportunity to photograph the badminton player PV Sindhu in between her intense practice sessions for the upcoming BWF World Championships in Glasgow (Update: she won a silver!).

Harsha Vadlamani Photojournalist, Documentary Photographer and Filmmaker in India

The Caravan, who commissioned me to take a few portraits for the cover and some action shots, ran the photographs beautifully alongside Ajachi Chakrabarti’s excellent profile of her in the August issue. Glad to have finally scored a cover for one of my favourite magazines!

For a Handful of Stardust, my long-term project photographing struggling actors in the Telugu-language film industry, has been featured on PDN’s Photo of the Day.

Harsha Vadlamani Photojournalist, Documentary Photographer and Filmmaker in India
Harsha Vadlamani Photojournalist, Documentary Photographer and Filmmaker in India

“For as long as I can remember, mother never took a day off. Father slept all day and got drunk and beat her at night, but she would be back in the fields the next morning.”

Jagyani Sravanthi’s mother Gongalla Vijaya, a farmer, killed herself in December 2016 in Ramnagar Thanda near Jangalapally in Telangana’s Jayashankar Bhupalapally district. Telangana recorded the largest number of suicides among women farmers in 2015, according to the National Crime Records Bureau of India. Data for 2016 is still awaited.

From a recent assignment for OPEN magazine, working on an issue extremely close to my heart- India’s agrarian crisis. Please read the story by V Shoba here.

In January this year, I had travelled to Amritsar, Punjab on assignment for Explore Parts Unknown, a new venture by the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, Roads and Kingdoms and CNN, to photograph the city’s attractions and great food.

Eat ghee, find God. Spend the perfect day in Amritsar.

Harsha Vadlamani Photojournalist, Documentary Photographer and Filmmaker in India