Catherine Le Scolan-Quéré

KOLKATA | It is a mosaic of the human condition, between grandeur and destitution, culture and despair. It is the city of the six Nobel Prizes, and that of the City of Joy, cult novel by Dominique Lapierre. This metropolis, the capital of West Bengal, feels as much as it explores. The second city of India renamed Kolkata in 2001, it represents for many Westerners the image of misery. Now, ruled by the Communist Party for many years, the city of the writer and philosopher Tagore is also considered the intellectual, artistic and cultural epicenter of the country. Although schooling is free until the age of 16, too many children in slums still drop out of school to provide for their families.
Between the Kumartuli Sculptor District and the flower market near Howrah Bridge, the events that punctuate daily life take place on the street.
In this series of images taken in 2015 during the Diwali and Durga Puja festivities, I look at work, inactivity or rest, exchanges between Indians and the isolation of some of the lowest, often arrived from the countryside hoping to find work, and survive in a sometimes hostile urban environment.
I could have photographed in black and white, but my eye is tirelessly attracted by the flat colors, and India is a country of colors. The color allows me to convey the emotions felt when I trigger the device.
By the framing, the composition, the light, I wish to show the effervescence, the urgency to live or other times the fatalism, the renunciation of some inhabitants of Kolkata, by capturing moments of life.
Because in photography, as in my professional life, it’s the human that interests me. Here, the human in the city.

COUNTRY | France

BIO | French doctor, Catherine Le Scolan-Quéré lives and works in Rennes, Brittany. Trained in the workshop by photographer Claude Renault, she practices street photography for six years. From 2011 to 2019, she made six trips to India, including first as a volunteer doctor in a dispensary of Varanasi. Her photographs have been exhibited in Rennes, Paris, Brussels and New York City. She obtained the 1st place in color photo for the Brittany region in 2017. Her images have been published in several French photography magazines. Photographers’ masters of composition, light and the color that inspires her are Harry Gruyaert, Alex Webb, Nikos Economopoulos, Claude Renault, Diana Maria, and Marji Lang.