Paroma Mukherjee picks her favourite read of 2024

For nearly two decades, Sohrab Hura’s photographs have moved between documentary and fiction, and they’ve often been both at once too. Hura is India’s youngest Magnum Photos member with an enviable bag of self-published photo books. In 2022, recovering from the long-term lung damage caused by Covid-19, he decided to set aside the camera and draw for fun (as he’s often cheekily admitted to friends — full disclosure here of being one). His new book, published by MACK, is dedicated to friends.

Not only is Things Felt But Not Quite Expressed remarkably fun, but also tender and everyday, as his pastels find movement outside of what one is used to seeing in his photographic practice. The book itself, as an art object, is reminiscent of tall, padded family photo albums from the early 1990s. The portraits begin with family and illness, moving very swiftly to scenes of mischief (the cats are held largely responsible), intimacy between friends and lovers and even popular memes that friends have shared on Instagram. A favourite is a detail of a child’s open mouth, the braces on the teeth being targeted by the tongue. Hura titles it School Days.

For an artist who’s never shied away from the political landscape around him, this book is largely distant from that world. However, Hura packs in some that hit you in the gut because one’s not expecting them in between pages of fun and laughs. For instance, Doordarshan’s distorted transmission painted as television of the 1990s is followed quickly by the Babri Masjid demolition (again as television of the ’90s). There’s also an early Gogh-esque pastel drawing of a Palestinian couple living in Syria as political refugees. The drawings were made in a period when Hura, admittedly, felt unable to connect with the permanency of photographs. The only photograph that interestingly makes its way into the book is of his mother that he again paints on the very next page. For those who know his work, and especially him as a friend, this book of drawings is as close as you can get to Hura’s eye. It is an invite into how his mind sees and his sense of humour, which could very well be a coping mechanism given the violence in the world and the limited responses artists now have left to it.