Vanishing Tribes

Vanishing Traders is a posed portrait project on disappearing traders and professionals in India.Till about a decade ago, it was the local milkman who woke me up daily ringing the bell of his cycle, pouring milk into the steel vessel or glass bottle kept overnight on the doorstep. This was a daily ritual in every Indian home. Evenings were complete only after the candy-man came by pushing his cart. Cracked plastic pots and buckets were religiously saved for the fix-it man, who stopped by every few months. Dry fruit-sellers and small traders came regularly, ready to barter their ware for bric-a-brac.The austerity of reduce, reuse and recycle was just the way of life. But not anymore. These mobile traders, nomadic in the sense that they wandered with their trade, have nearly vanished along with some of the professions.Modernisation and availability of cheaper goods in a country with a growing wealthier middle class has made these trade redundant.I have been documenting these vanishing traders since 2011. My photography project looks at them as heroes of a bygone era, Most of the traders are example for subsistence living before the three Rs became an activist’s mantra.