Eve Was Framed, Dutta illustrates the dilemma of faith in Hindu rituals and their gravity on the women who follow these notions. For him, “women receive conflicting messages of newly forged opportunities restricted by religious law and economic insecurity. Because of this, women often feel failed by modernization and find a return to traditional religious shelters and keep following useless rituals.”
Dutta began this work in 2012 when he photographed a festival called Dandi in Kolkata, where Goddess Sitala is worshipped. Women bathe in the Ganges and crawl towards the temple, at times walking over their babies or children as a part of the ritual. He wrote to me, “it is believed that if [the] Goddess is pleased she will possess a participant woman. Over years it has now become a practice to drug a woman and her unnatural behaviors thereafter is portrayed as the possession.” The photographs in this series are a witness to moments of these rituals in a stark black and white portrayal. There is a theatrical under-current to Dutta’s work, which might characterize his view of the untrue, stage-like nature of these acts in which women are rendered powerless yet fervent in their devotion.
At the age of 15, Arka Dutta would make photographs with his father’s Pentax. He abandoned the camera to study and became a mechanical engineer. A few years later, he was inspired by the work of the Brazilian social documentary photographer, Sebastião Salgado, and he found his love for photography once again. Between work and other things, Dutta makes photographs to act as a witness to society, aiming to highlight issues such as this.