Neha Hirve

Full Shade / Half Sun

[ EPF 2017 – FUJIFILM / YOUNG TALENT AWARD RUNNER UP ]

Tamil Nadu, India. This land was a desert, once upon a time. The soil dried up and the water ran off until nothing would grow because the people had cut the trees to build their cities. Men and women journeyed here from the ends of the earth, people for whom ordinary life wasn’t enough anymore, and they planted acacia trees to shelter them from the burning sun, and built their lives together and found meaning in the world once again. The acacia covered half the soil from the sun and the thorniest plants began to grow in their shade.

© Neha Hirve

Digging holes to plant new saplings. Since 2003, volunteers members of the Sadhana community have been working to re-plant the area’s indigenous Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest.

Jamie collects food for the pet cows, not used by the community for any animal product, not even their manure.

Remnants of an eco-hut built from packs of mud.

Now, the jungle is a womb. The air in the tropics is like warm honey, viscous, sticky, filling the ears until the sounds of the outside world are far away. In the still light of the afternoons, hours pass like days and the trees stand sentinel.
Because every year, the summer comes, and with it, the distant memory of when there was nothing.

Peackocks.

Maxime and Thaïs prepare to use the neurotoxin cypermethrin to combat termite hills. It’s one of the few things that is too difficult to do with natural methods.

Old school bus.

Gome is one of four Israeli sisters, none of whom currently goes to a formal school. This practice is known as ‘unschooling’ and is one of the core values of the Sadhana community.

Blending the genres of documentary, the archive, and fine art, Full Shade / Half Sun is not so interested in journalistic fact, but attempts to bring up philosophical and existential questions of the ways in which we find meaning in the land we live on.

Members of the Sadhana community swim almost daily in a large pool of mud, to cool off or just for entertainment.

Naëlann with a snake skin. He has never been to a formal school, a practice called ‘unschooling’ – © Neha Hirve

Lise at sunset.

Mosquito net in the forest.

Short Bio

I am a long-term project photographer based in Stockholm, and interested in man’s relation to the natural environment, and the photographic archive. With a degree in filmmaking, the cinematic and the performative influence my photographic work. Recently I was the recipient of the Women Photograph Grant, have work in publications such as Tidningen ETC and National Geographic, and have participated in exhibitions in Sweden and New York.

Related Links

nehahirve.com

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The Emerging Photographer Fund is supported by generous donors to the Magnum Foundation