HARMIT SINGH’S WAR [2022]
Trained as an architect, Harmit Singh (1941-2017) became a professional photographer while working as an architect for a UN reconstruction project in Kenya, then newly independent from British rule. He left architecture and returned to India to be a photojournalist in the mid-60s. In 1971, he was sent by a photo agency to cover the war that split Pakistan into two countries–Pakistan and Bangladesh.
By the time the war ended, Singh was altered by the experience of photographing the refugee camps, mass graves, and emaciated prisoners of war. He resigned from Black Star and left photojournalism, traveling the world for the rest of his life with an old Leica camera. It was while clearing his belongings after his death that his daughter discovered a collection of Bangladesh slides. The war broke Singh’s will to document history; posthumously we glean his work as straddling the conjuncture of two refugee eras.
With support from the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, Naeem Mohaiemen will be Nadir Mohamed Postdoctoral Fellowship at Ryerson University for summer 2020, researching a photo book based on Harmit Singh’s archives.