Hannah Mathew, a photographer/artist from the UK, made a photographic documentary oriented work by taking portraits of houseboat workers. Her experience as an ambitious tourist, having travelled extensively in India, brought her to address the socio-economic condition of tourism in the conflict zone of Kashmir.
She frequently visited houseboats and interacted with people whose lives were dependent on the simple trade of renting houseboats to tourists. She made a selection of portraits set against the decorated and well furnished interiors of the houseboats, which narrate a telling story of a lavish investment left to despair and emptiness. It is interesting to notice how Hannah’s photographs allude to the effect of economic loss by encountering the portrait image as a disconcerting metamorphosis where the backdrop is the same old luxurious home while the image in the foreground, ironically, appears strange and undesirable. All the preparations for the guest, which involves the everyday cleaning and dusting of the possessions acquired after a hard long years, remains in a stagnant state, of preparation like a bejeweled bride waiting for the groom. It is like a home never visited. Speaking about her presumptions, Hannah, on the contrary, discovers a certain sustained optimism shared by the houseboat owners for finding alternative means for survival.
“My presumption was that due to the conflict, these intimate hotels were under threat, but after speaking to the houseboat owners I discovered that this was not necessarily the case. I had presumed that as there had been a reduction in Western tourists, this was true of domestic tourism also. Although many families could no longer rely on a steady flow of tourists for income from their boats, others were successful businesses that managed to attract many Indian tourists.”
Hannah chose the mantelpiece in one of the rooms of the building as a pedestal to place her photographs made into an open album. Being the first room of the building, her work guides the viewer from the intimate experience of looking into the family album to the more expansive and impromptu experience in the other rooms.
