Women and vibrancy through a diplomat’s lens

Strongly evident in her choice of images which are on display,‘women’ – both young and old – are subjects of most of them. Most of Beth’s characters ranging from a upper-class woman in a North Kolkata household to a young adivasi woman carrying a bunch of logs in Shantiniketan,her vivid images capture powerful emotions. Her subjects are not shying away from the lens. “I have always felt that women especially in Bengal are the warmest I have ever met and the kind of work that they do amidst thousand difficulties are worth saluting,” Beth says. Through the pictures of a weaver in Phulia in Nadia district to the housewife who talks smilingly on her mobile phone while washing the dishes in a local pond,Beth says she has tried to capture the myriad mood and day-do-day chores performed by women in Bengal.

And photographs of Bengal without depicting politics? Payne acknowledges with a smile saying: “ I have several images of rallies,political movements and politics in the city,but as a diplomat I have to maintain a certain decorum. It’s best left to the people in this state.” Beth says her journey with a camera in Bengal has given her the confidence to explore any place in the future.

In her three-year stint here,Beth has travelled extensively from Darjeeling to Bishnupur,West Midnapore to busy highways of Bengal and she feels that very few places in this world can match the vibrancy,colours and joyous nature of women and children in the state. She shares a strange bonding with Goddess Durga and the spirit of the festival.” Whenever I visited Kumartuli,I have felt a strange subtle bond with the Goddess and watching her transform from a lump of clay to an idol signified the story of the numerous smiling children and their mothers whom I have often met here,” Beth says.

As a young child who was the school’s yearbook photographer,Beth loved her simple Minolta SLR camera that opened a new world for her. But she never knew that many years later this hobby of hers would enable her to overcome the struggle against PTSD and heal her completely.

“When I bought the Canon 7D post my stint in Iraq,I slowly started reliving my passion for photography that I shared during my University days in Pennsylvania. Slowly this became a tool for me to explore the different cultures that I entered as a Diplomat,” says a smiling Beth.