005 - Kalpesh Lathigra
© Kalpesh Lathigra
Kalpesh Lathigra was born and bred in London, England. He studied photojournalism at the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communication), before being awarded what was then a much sought-after traineeship with the Independent Newspaper, which at that time was renowned for a commitment to using excellent photography in a way that many national newspapers in the UK never really had in the past.
Kalpesh went on to have a successful freelance career as a newspaper and magazine photograper, shooting features and portraits for most of the major British broadsheets and their weekend magazines and in 2000 he won a first prize (Arts, Singles) in the World Press Awards. A few years later he was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Fellowship for his long-term project about the lives of widows in India: Brides of Krishna.
He is still a busy, jobbing editorial photographer, but, alongside that role, he has also developed his own personal practice in which he has attempted to straddle the invisible divide between editorial, documentary photographer and a more authored, artistic sensibility - a state of affairs that we spend much of the interview mulling over.
His first book, 'Lost In The Wilderness', which he funded with a Kickstarter campaign, will be published later this Autumn and is the result of 5 years work documenting the native American Lakota Sioux community of the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, USA. (Check links below for updates.)
In Episode 005 Kalpesh discusses:
Use of the label 'artist'
Book project - 'Lost In The Wilderness'
Why working is good for the soul
A friendship with Ralph Fiennes
Changing his approach to the story
The fight against cliche
The World Press controversy
The danger of cliques
“You know that term ‘emerging photographer’... I’ve been shooting for 20 years and I’m still bloody emerging!”
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