Art: photographs by Madhav Rathi

Why I photograph

I photograph the streets of Bengaluru on a Nikon and a Canon. Mostly people at work: car wash bays, small workshops, building sites. The places we pass every day without looking.

For a long time I didn't see them either. The camera made me stop.

I came to pictures through cinema. The street gave me something cinema can't.

I think street photography is the purest form of the medium, and the hardest. Nothing is staged. I can't move the light, the people or the wall behind them. I choose where to stand and when to press. Everything else is left to chance.

Most frames fail. I keep walking for the few that don't.