About The Totos (in short):
Totos are one of the smallest, endangered Indigenous tribes in the world, residing in Totopara, a village along the northern border of West Bengal in India and Bhutan. They’re currently about 1,632 in population, they were about 1,564 in 2014 when documentary photographer Abhijit AA started to research and about 300 during India’s independence in 1947.
This project, spanning almost 8 years as a photo-video exhibition and a hardcover self-published book is Abhijit’s pursuit to document and reflect upon the conditions of the Indigenous Totos and contribute towards their socio-anthropological research, in the face of rapid changes due to globalization, modernization and acculturation. An endeavour, as a documentary photographer to make the world take note of Totos.
About The Exhibition:
In stills and short videos this exhibition takes one into an extensive immersive visual journey into daily life, exclusive rituals, tradition, culture, endangered language of the Indigenous Totos and the changes due to globalization, modernization and acculturation.
Abhijit will be conducting 30 mins photo-talks with Q&A on Sept. 6, 7, 12, 13, 14 at 4 pm wherein he will share detailed insight into the project and his process as a documentary photographer. He will also be selling and personally signing the self-published photo-video book on the Totos.
This has been a travelling exhibition from Mumbai, Thane in India to Oslo in Norway to Toronto in Canada.
Bio:
Abhijit Alka Anil is a self-taught documentary photographer, photojournalist, a non-fiction short video maker-editor and a self-published author of the first multimedia book on the little-known Indigenous Toto tribe of India, a work of almost eight years. This book is a part of permanent online and physical collection at The Photobook Café in London, UK.
He has been a photojournalist for The Globe and Mail (Toronto), The Times Of India, The Indian Express (Mumbai) and Utrop (Oslo).
As a documentary photographer, Abhijit visually documents the works and projects of various humanitarian organizations and NGOs on their project sites. He uses journalistic, academic and oral histories research methods to fact check the images/videos made and complement them by writing short articles, as well as short and long captions.
He has worked in Cuba, Canada, Norway, parts of the EU and India with over 10 years of experience.
He’s currently based in Toronto and actively looking for opportunities within the documentary photography sector and visual documentation for various nonprofits.
