Bharat Sikka, The Sapper, 2022

Bharat Sikka’s “The Sapper” is as layered and multifaceted as the relationship it narrates, that between a father and an adult son; through sequencing, Sikka creates moments of observation, remembrance, close confrontation and collaborative performance.

The complexity of the work is emphasized by its title: “The Sapper,” or “the Engineer,” is both a clue to the father’s life, spent largely within the Indian Army, and a formula that allows the author to distance himself from the subject, as if the book constituted a study of a stranger and not of a familiar and, at least on the surface, familiar figure.

The entire sequence hinges on the contrast between what is known and what is unknown, using the limitations of the photographic medium to highlight the impossibility of knowing thoroughly a seemingly simple and physiological reality such as that of a father’s relationship with his son; the project harks back to the idea of photography as an act of intrinsic scrutiny, of detailed and in-depth exploration of a real and complex subject.