A River Runs Aground

A new photobook mourns the Ganga’s decline. Somewhere in the middle of Ganga Ma, Giulio Di Sturco’s somewhat astonishing photobook, you stop at a picture that is both bewildering and pretty. A man with a hosepipe seems to be washing away snow. Since none of his pictures comes with captions, Di Sturco tells a fuller story: “I shot that outside Delhi, near where the Yamuna joins the Ganges. What looks like an iceberg is, in fact, just pollution.”

- Shreevatsa Nevatia

It feels discomfiting that chemical waste, dumped by factories along the Yamuna, can lather up a foam so picturesque. “I like pictures that work at different levels,” says Di Sturco. “If you stop to look at the picture you once thought beautiful, you find a second level. For me, it’s about showing that the beautiful can have a second meaning.” In a sense then, all of Ganga Ma is an unnerving camouflage.

Working as a freelance photojournalist in India for five years (2007-2012), contributing to The New York Times, National Geographic and Le Monde, Di Sturco felt he wanted to dig deeper. He was dissatisfied with the pictures of military atrocity he’d taken in Kashmir. “The picture says everything there is to say. I don’t want to say anything. I want people to see what they want. They need to get involved.”