As the old adage goes “there’s no place like home” and for photographer Chetan Kumar (@chetankumarstudio), the journey back to his birth town in the state of Bihar in Eastern India provided him an avenue to further master his craft of photography. After being away from home most of his life receiving education elsewhere, Kumar is now grabbing back lost memories through his camera. “I was sent to boarding school at a very young age,” Chetan recalls to Instagram blog. “With a heavy heart, I had to leave behind my parents, the beautiful village and countryside, the rivers and the boats, bicycle rides and kite flying.” Spending his formative years in the Northern part of India, he longed for the familiar environment of Bihar,“ Hostel life was about survival among students,” he adds. “There was always a timetable, always a plan and a task.”
Returning home at the adolescent age of 16, Kumar embarked on an adventure around Bihar re-introducing himself to his countryside village. It was a short homecoming, as not long after, he would again leave and settle far away place to complete his University studies. When destiny beckons again after more than a decade, Kumar returned to Bihar once again, but this time, with a camera by his side. Using his new found skills of photography, Kumar made sure to document his home city through his photographs, and share his passion for his home on his Instagram account. As Kumar would fill his feed with awesome captures of the daily scene that surrounded him and accompanying them with a lengthy narrative caption, he provided his followers an instant familiar connection to his village in the state of Bihar. Referring to his homecoming as the “Bihar Odyssey” which was buoyed by numerous travels in between, he has now fully embraced the fine art of travel photography “I had overcome my fear and inhibitions of traveling alone, and I enjoyed it” he says.
It is no wonder to see Kumar’s Instagram followers grow by the day because of the manner which he weaves telling narratives along with each image. Captioning a photograph of two women standing by a tree, Kumar writes, “The Rural Life. Two Ladies having a polite conversation after shopping at the local village market in Gaya. It’s absorbing to see how women have exceptional balancing skills developed to carry a number of pots of water and load over their head i.e generally in life too.”
Even though the state of Bihar seems like a world away from ours and is often overlooked as it is among the most under-developed regions in the vast nation of India – it still finds a way to showcase its simple grandeur and many fascinating portraits of its people and charming everyday life through the lens and attentive eyes of Kumar. Viewing his photographs will make you realize how meaningful travel photography can be.
To view more of Chetan’s narrative photographs, please follow him @chetankumarstudio on Instagram.
