‘By the banks of the Ganges two brothers engaged in a timeless practice of scriptural recitation from the Bhagavad Gita’ by Shashank Verma
When Shashank Verma discovered a small bundle of letters hidden away in his family home in Mumbai, little did he know they would spark his next series of images.
The letters to his mother were from his maternal grandmother, who was living in Varanasi at the time. The correspondence painted a picture of life in the historic city on the banks of the Ganges river – and inspired Verma to journey there himself. The resulting series is Traces of Survivance.
The London-based photographer – who began taking pictures as a teenager in the Indian coastal town of Dahanu – says his grandmother’s letters carried “the weight of migration, displacement and adaptation”. He adds, “They spoke of longing – of me trying to retain fragments of grandmother’s past while forging a new future.”
Here, Verma discusses his photographic journey and shares images from Traces of Survivance.
‘A former serviceman retired from the Indian Air Force’ by Shashank Verma
When did you first pick up a camera and what happened next?
I first picked up a camera as a teenager in Dahanu, a small coastal town in the state of Maharashtra where I was born. I learned developing films and the basics of photography through my father, who has been a photojournalist for about 40 years.
It wasn’t a deliberate decision. I just wanted to document people around me – family, neighbours, the everyday stillness of a small town. Photography became a way to make sense of the transient nature of life. Over time, this instinctive need to document evolved into a more structured practice. I studied photography, moved to London and started shaping my work around themes of memory, identity, post-colonialism and the idea of survivance.
‘A temple in the premises of a local Adivasi community in the western coastal region of India’ by Shashank Verma
Tell us about your series Traces of Survivance.
The project began when I found a bunch of old letters stored away in my family home. These letters carried the weight of migration, displacement and adaptation. They spoke of longing, of me trying to retain fragments of grandmother’s past while forging a new future.
She lived in Varanasi for a few years. I started thinking about how personal histories are preserved, altered or even erased over time. This led me to Varanasi where I explored the idea of survivance – not just survival but the act of retaining identity despite change. Through images of landscapes, rituals and everyday life, Traces of Survivance examines how history is inscribed onto places and people.
‘Woman wearing ancestral jewellery at Diwali’ by Shashank Verma
Why does Varanasi hold such a fascination for you?
Varanasi is a city where time feels layered rather than linear. It’s a place of perpetual transition, yet it remains unchanged in essence. My fascination comes from its duality – its stillness and its chaos, its past and its present. It’s a city that embodies the very idea of survivance. People come here for closure, for spiritual continuity, for a sense of belonging that transcends life and death.
Through my work I try to capture this tension between permanence and impermanence, between memory and erasure.
‘Deathbeds of Manikarnika’ by Shashank Verma
How important is the theme of ‘belonging’ to your work?
Belonging is at the core of my work. It’s something I’ve always questioned – growing up in Mumbai, moving to London and travelling through places that exist on the margins of history. I am interested in how people anchor themselves in shifting landscapes, how cultural memory persists across generations.
My work isn’t about offering answers but about holding space for these questions. Photography, for me, is a way to bridge distances – between places, between people, between past and present. The project isn’t just limited to Varanasi. It explores similar stories of people in the UK who elaborate and share their emotion of ‘shifting’ identities on a foreign land.
‘Dhyaan, meditational trance’ by Shashank Verma
How has living in London affected your photography?
It has given me a different vantage point. Distance sharpens perception. Being away from home allowed me to see it with fresh eyes, to understand its textures in a deeper way. London itself is a city shaped by migration, by histories that overlap and collide.
That has influenced how I approach photography – not just as documentation, but as a form of storytelling that acknowledges movement, loss and adaptation. It has also made me more conscious of how identities are constructed and represented, which informs my visual language.
‘Mundan, hair sacrifice’ by Shashank Verma
Your work crosses the genres of documentary, art and fashion. Why?
I don’t see these genres as separate. Documentary photography gives me a framework for storytelling, but I also lean into artistic interpretation – using abstraction, texture and sequencing to create meaning. Fashion, in a way, is another layer of this – clothing carries history, identity and personal expression. I’m interested in how all these elements intersect.
For me, photography is not just about representation; it’s about evocation. I want my images to feel like fragments of memory, like something both real and imagined.
‘Shikha’ by Shashank Verma
What’s next for you?
I’m expanding Traces of Survivance, looking at how these ideas of cultural memory and displacement manifest in different parts of the world. I’m also working on a new series that explores archival photographs, and their role in shaping personal and collective histories. Beyond that, I want to continue experimenting – playing with form, with materiality, with how images are experienced beyond the traditional photograph.
All images from the series Traces of Survivance by Shashank Verma.
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