Atish Saha

By Maya Lerman

Illustration by Selin Ho

I had heard about Atish Saha, GS ’24, through my grapevine of idealistic film major friends long before I got the chance to meet him. Seeing him for the first time, I immediately got the hype. Atish has had his photography featured in The New Yorker, Time, The Guardian, and Vice. He’s pursued art across mediums and across the globe, and has developed a small but mighty coalition of friends at Columbia dedicated to helping him achieve his artistic vision. And achievements aside, Atish is the kind of person you can’t help being charmed by. “I’m a professional yapper,” he says apologetically; we’ve been chatting for only fifteen minutes and have already discussed topics ranging from affirmative action to the plagiarism of Indian philosophers by the West. His energy is contagious: In a matter of minutes, Atish has me passionately yapping alongside him. 

If you get the chance to speak with Atish, one thing will become abundantly clear: Atish lives and breathes his art. He describes sleeping in train stations to make it to exhibits, crashing at friends’ houses, or even going days without food or sleep. For Atish, the sacrifice of material comfort is a no-brainer. A striking example of this is a piece of performance art he created, which featured him sitting inside a transparent replica of the Kaaba, a famous mosque in Mecca, while wearing a burqa for 53 hours nonstop—the duration of his mother’s labor. He tells me of the sheer vulnerability of this act, of putting his male body on display in what many would consider an emasculating manner. The performance was a personal meditation on Atish’s role as a photographer, putting himself on exhibition in the same way as his photographed subjects. “I was trying to punish myself in a way, so that I can understand the pain when I photograph someone else,” he tells me.

The most consequential moment in Atish’s career was his photography of the collapse of Rana Plaza, a garment factory in Dhaka. On April 24, 2013, Atish witnessed a tragedy which killed over a thousand garment workers. “I just happened to be there,” Atish tells me as he describes the horrific scene: He felt the ground shake, saw white ash fill the sky, and watched as bodies were pulled out from under the rubble. Atish recalls he and his friends having to amputate limbs with their bare hands to rescue survivors—an experience which profoundly affected his psyche and left him unable to stomach the sight of meat for years.

To combat the Bangladeshi government's attempts to underplay the death count, Atish developed a dedication to documentation. He describes feeling a profound sense of responsibility, prompting him to start a database to track the missing and dead. Atish’s favorite work to come out of the incident was a more humble endeavor: a collection of photographs of objects that he found in the weeks following the collapse, before the government closed off the area to the public. The objects ranged from the mundane (cups, pieces of clothes, vanity bags) to the nauseating (bags of hair from victims). Atish kept these artifacts in his home for months, living alongside them as they began to rot and stink, and even losing friends who couldn’t stand the persistent reminders of death. But they held profound importance for Atish, as objects that could have belonged to anyone, and that served as a memento of the intimacy of lives lost in the vastness of tragedy. In a way, Atish’s objects were more human than his photographs of death and suffering, and were representative of his philosophy on photography. “As a human being, we can actually do more than live one bodily experience through one limited body,” Atish explains. “We can actually enjoy life through multiple bodies. That pluralism, that understanding of the plurality of bodies and self, changed me a lot.” 

For his work at Rana Plaza, Atish was approached by an editor of Time magazine and given a chance to show his photography. He came to America, and proudly presented his collection of photographs of objects. But Time wasn’t interested, telling Atish that the objects looked like products sold on Instagram. “They were really interested in the bizarre body parts,” Atish laments. Violence and horror sells; the poignancy of disembodied objects simply didn’t have the same voyeuristic appeal. 

The interaction with Time highlighted the dissonance between the values of the mainstream media and Atish’s personal goals for his art. Still, Atish remains dedicated to pursuing activism in his own way, defying popular narratives and embracing politicization. He offers to show me a short film he’s recently made about the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell. The video includes footage of a recent vigil held by Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace, interspersed with audio of Bushnell’s recorded message to the world. It ends with Bushnell’s haunting screams of “Free Palestine” as he is set aflame, followed by an eerie, techno rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” 

The point, Atish tells me, is to show how arrangement changes the narrative. He asks if, watching his piece, I ever got the sense that Aaron Bushnell was mentally unstable. I responded that I did not, despite that being the dominant presentation of the story by American news outlets. This is an example of Atish’s commitment to docufiction, a form of documentary that challenges the notion of objective truth. He quotes a protester from the Vietnam War, who, when asked why they demonstrate, answered, “I am not doing it for the [Vietnamese] people, I’m doing it for myself so this country cannot change me.” Atish too wants to use art to question ideological hegemony from within. “You’re not watching anymore, you are seeing for the first time, even though you have looked at it,” Atish says. He describes it in dating terms: “When we say we’re seeing each other, that means you’re not just hooking up … you’re seeing this person in the everyday, mundane, boring, exciting, unsexy, sexy, all of it. Seeing means you’re interfering.” 

This interference is what Atish hopes to accomplish through filmmaking. For him, film is special in its mobilizing power—it's an art form designed for collective viewing, made to bring people together around a synthesis of sounds, images and ideas that, more than any other medium, most closely resembles life. Filmmaking is also a deeply collaborative process: To make his films, Atish has cultivated a tight-knit community of filmmakers and film lovers across Columbia’s campus; without them, Atish’s lofty ambitions would never be possible. Atish asks me if I know the word “glean”—a personal favorite of his. “I glean from people’s lives, and they glean from my life,” he tells me. Atish sees no separation between his artistic endeavors and his personal life. His friends appear in his art, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera, and are constantly shaping Atish’s vision. The way Atish talks about his community is endlessly endearing; I can see how much he cherishes them, how indebted he feels to his comrades and collaborators in his artistic process. 

I ask Atish if he ever takes breaks. He laughs, as if the question doesn’t even compute. Art isn’t a career, he tells me. It’s not a job that he feels the need to take time off from. His life, his friends, his everyday experience is his art, and that, for Atish, is the greatest joy he can imagine. Atish doesn’t feel the need to advertise his art to others. “Let’s not sell now,” he says with a smile. We’re young, and there will be time to sell later. “I don’t need to be money’s bitch.”

As our interview comes to a close, Atish has one request for me: “Don’t write my age,” he says with a chuckle. “I don’t want to be old.” Yet “old” is the absolute last word I would use to describe Atish. Everything about him, from his energy to his mindset, is bursting with youth, innovation, and boundless passion. Regardless of age, Atish has truly made the most of his time at Columbia—and that determined glint in his eyes tells me he’s far from finished.