As the international community discusses climate change in Paris, an Indian photographer looks at his country’s reliance on coal to fuel both industry and the economy.
Within hours of his arrival in Jharia, a remote corner of India’s Jharkhand State, Souvid Datta’s eyes teared up and his lungs burned. Swirling clouds of coal dust and toxic fumes from dozens of fires ablaze in open seams made him dizzy. Jharia is in the main coal belt in the region that supplies the highest-quality coal fueling India’s rapid economic expansion.
A fabrication by a U.K. photojournalist has led to reviews of his other work and a worldwide discussion about photojournalism ethics, including within the College Photographer of the Year competition at MU.
Since his last interview with TIME, Datta has declined to comment further. “Following advice from my legal counsel, I am in the process of reviewing my archives,” he says
Google “Souvid Datta” now and it won’t be his many awards, grants and contest-worthy stories that come up first. It’s going to be how he went down in flames. The first few pages of search results will include accusations that he’s a liar, a thief and untrustworthy. All things his name should be synonymous with, given his admitted actions.
He now confesses that there are other images from that project that were also altered using post-production techniques, and he says he also “appropriated photos” from colleagues like Daniele Volpe, Hazel Thompson and Raul Irani, and lied in order to conceal those actions
The award-winning photographer Souvid Datta found himself in the middle of a controversy this week when his photo of a young sex trafficking victim was
We’ve reached out to Datta for comment but have yet to hear back. It appears that his website, Facebook and Twitter were all taken down after our requests
The project explores child sex trafficking and the socio-economic conditions that perpetuate it, as well as the challenges that NGOs face in tackling the issue.
