On the night of January 15th, Leila Alaoui was fatally shot during a hotel siege by the Al-Qaeda, while on a photography assignment with Amnesty International at Burkina Faso. It was the death of someone I revered a lot, but I had not been with or spoken to her for a long time. My memories of her had in ways, even faded. I didn’t know how to react.

Leila, a French-Moroccan documentary photographer, visited India in July 2014 to take portraits of a community of women workers in a garment factory at Chennai. I was commissioned to shoot the making of this photo project, “Made in India”. Over a period of one month, she was involved in photographing every single worker in the factory. I joined her over the last 3 days of her stay in India. I could see how Leila had fallen in love with the intense faces of some of these women. She was immensely fascinated by even their everyday attire which seemed grand and alien to her. She was genuinely interested in getting to know them better. The simple honesty in her choosing to photograph all 1000 workers in the factory, without any discrimination in her selection, made her extremely welcoming to the workers. They were equally curious about her as she was with them.

I chose to explore this relationship between Leila and the workers as the basis for my making. I was given access to the privacy within the little space of her mobile studio, where she had chosen to isolate the women from their work environment. I could see the women walking one after the other, from obscurity into being in the spotlight for that one moment while being photographed by her. Most women were naturally nervous as they entered in, but it wouldn’t take Leila long to make them smile. She would communicate effortlessly with them by touching their hair, fixing their clothes and getting them ready for the picture. Her touch magically transformed their anxiety into ease. Language was never a barrier between them. Even outside of the studio Leila was made to feel at home by the women who would involve her in conversations mostly relayed through signs and gestures. This mutual give and take made Leila wanting the women to participate in the process too and she then had the idea of providing each of them a framed photograph in return.

A year and half after Leila had left the country; the photographs were given to the women as a present for Diwali. Some of the women looked starkly different from their photographed selves; some had their hair cut for religious reasons; some had even quit their jobs but those who received their framed pictures were unanimously happy and thrilled to see themselves in a photo; for many these were their first picture in life.

Couple of months later, on the morning of January 16th 2016, I heard about the Burkina Faso terrorist attack. Although amongst the headlines of the day, I had seen and yet hadn’t registered the event. 3 days later, I got a call from Prakriti Foundation, the art and cultural organisation in Chennai through which I was put on to work with Leila, informing me of her demise.

The videos I had shot of Leila during her visit were seen by no one else, not even Leila. It had stayed with me in my hard drive, untouched. At a point, I had almost lost them when my hard drive submerged in water during the Chennai floods, but miraculously started functioning again. It was her demise that made me revisit the videos.

As I watched these videos and listened intently to her thoughts, memories started to rush back in me. Her amicable personality, her ambition to humanise and give a voice to the unheard and her talent in using photography to realise it had drawn me to her. With the exclusivity of the videos, I developed a sense of intimacy with Leila’s work. It was then that I was filled with the grief of her early demise. She had completely entrusted me with the video, and I could not share with her the beauty of her own work. I regret not being able to show her how much the women relished looking at themselves in her frame.

Leila in her interview with me had told how she wanted to come back to India, live with these women and spend more time with them. She wanted to bring these women to life and give them a voice, by making a life size exhibition of their photos. I stand with the resolve and responsibility of showcasing and bringing to limelight her project “Made in India”.

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Photo Essay, published in Scroll.in

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Documentary Film, commissioned by USAID

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