Bengali photographer receives particular recognition for their pictures of Yamuna pollution.

Thirty years ago, Somenath Mukhopadhyay took up a camera. Additionally, the photographer from Birbhum, West Bengal, received a special mention at the Nature inFocus Photography Awards last week in the Ramki Sreenivasan Conservation subcategory.

A woman doing Chhath Puja in the Yamuna near Delhi, with the water white with froth, was depicted in Mukhopadhyay’s photograph.  The photo was taken in November 2019. Mukhopadhyay’s quest to shoot the Yamuna River started when he came upon a colleague’s shot.

“I was shocked to see the amount of froth in the river. After that, I started collecting information to capture my own series,” he told .

“I travelled to the Yamuna near Delhi back in 2019 during Chhath Puja. When I first reached there the police did not allow me to go near the river as there was a huge crowd but I knew they were preventing me so that I could not take the pollution picture. However, somehow I managed to make my way through the crowd and capture some of the images. One of the images is this, which won me the recognition. It also won me the BarTur photo award.”

Among the world’s most contaminated rivers is the revered Yamuna. Uncontrolled sewage, industrial waste, and agricultural runoff have significantly fouled its waterways over time. Politicians in the nation’s capital have long debated the river’s pollution.

“I deliberately shot the photograph at that time,” Mukhopadhyay, 57, explains.

“There are several effects of this pollution on human, agricultural and aquatic health. I thought this particular image would be revealing a snapshot describing the whole effect in one particular shot. The title of my image is ‘Sinner’. Now this is a great irony as to who is the sinner over here. The person in the image who is praying and doing the rituals is she or he the sinner or are we the people who failed to protect the river? In the name of religion we are polluting our river sources. Now also, during the Khumbh Mela, the water is being polluted everywhere and all this is happening in the name of religion, worship and rituals. People think all this is divinity, but it is not so.”

The Nature inFocus Photography Awards increase awareness and highlight important conservation stories via striking photography. Mukhopadhyay is still working on related projects.

“Environment, river pollution and conservation are some of my favourite subjects,” he said. “At present, I am working on riverbank erosion along the Ganga. I travelled to a large part of the riverbank from Murshidabad to Malda.”