On yearly visits to Kashmir, Hura observed the cultural importance of snow; the photographer’s initial ignorance of this further signifying his position as an outsider. “From my side, as an outsider, I was there to see the snow like everyone else,” he acknowledges, “whereas, in the place itself, the snow has a very important meaning”. In Kashmir, there are three distinct periods of winter: Chillai-kalan runs from 20 December to the end of January and is the longest and harshest phase; this is followed by chillai-khurd, which thaws into chillai-bache, or baby winter. Snow is central to Kashmir’s tourism industry, and also the livelihood of its farmers: heavy snowfall during chillai-kalan is essential for farmers to water their crops during the spring.
Snow became an anchor to Hura’s experience and his ongoing project. “It also became a metaphor for my mask of denial,” he explains, “as the snow started to melt, it began to reveal a reality that I did not recognise earlier or that I might have been denying”. The snow embodies Hura’s shifting perception of Kashmir: the cycle of melting and freezing akin to the photographer’s approach of learning and unlearning. “Every time I am there I look at everything I have seen in the past in a new way,” he continues, “the place reveals something different”.
Acknowledging his position as an outsider, Hura emptied himself of ideas and listened: allowing the words of residents to spread through him and dictate his perception. “The people I talk to are my eyes there,” he explains in the exhibition catalogue, “much of my work is built upon metaphors that I try to connect to people’s memories”. Over time, he realised that the metaphors relate to reality, and employed them to reference the violence that has ripped through Kashmir for decades; a reality he decided not to depict.
The photographer recounts the metaphor his friend, Sajad, employed when speaking about his childhood at the height of militancy in the country: “Yahan pe khoon ki dariyan behti thi”, or “Rivers of blood would flow here”. Initially, he thought the expression was abstract, but after he witnessed Bakr Eid, the Islamic festival of sacrifice, Hura realised it was literal: the crimson blood of animals darkening the waterways during the event. The statement took on additional significance following the intensification of violence across the region when human blood filled the rivers. Others spoke of the earth swallowing many secrets, a literal reference to the mass graves uncovered years earlier, while, “the bedding in the house becoming warm again” alludes to the army’s practice of checking homes for fugitives by feeling for body heat in beds seemingly uninhabited.
Visual references to the metaphors weave through the series: a muddy pothole replete with red water and a gushing stream coloured with crimson blood; a crumpled duvet tossed upon a mattress; and expanses of earth enveloped in snow, then mud, and grass. The work is ambiguous, but this is intentional. For Hura, making it has been a process of personal reflection, and he acknowledges that different people will read the series in distinct ways: Kashmiris may recognise the metaphors, while others, like Hura, are blinded by the beauty of the place. “I do not want to strangle my work by attempting to box it too specifically,” he says. What should come out is the passing of time, as the snow melts away revealing another Kashmir beneath. “In a way, I am not so worried about trying to put meaning into the work,” reflects Hura, “what I am trying to find is the right note, the right tone, and the right way in which the work can caress someone back”.