I bought a 35 point-and-shoot camera a few years ago from a flea market in Prague. I spent two months trying to buy film for it in Bombay, only to finish the roll in a week. Analogue photography, unlike my handy iPhone, doesn’t grant me a hundred clicks to get the perfect shot. Rather, it gives me a tactile experience that replaces speed with a deep breath. Being restricted to a limited number of frames, and knowing that I’m paying for each shot, makes me think twice before I click.

Bennet Paul’s photography perfectly captures this patience. A scroll down his Instagram, and you see his vision begin to emerge. It’s a simple one: to know something about somebody, but one that explains the quiet, probing power of his work. His work documents the people of his hometown, Kochi. Paul’s attention is unwavering, and when his subjects return it there’s a flash of recognition between them. His work isn’t merely a record of everyday life. It’s about the longing to connect and the pleasure of being truly seen.

Paul isn’t modern, much less postmodern. With few exceptions, his pictures are in subtly toned black-and-white — a rarity in a world where colour is the standard. In 2017, Leica released a beautiful, ridiculous ad for a digital camera that only takes B&W photos. It argued: “In the color world, there’s no space for dreams.” Paul’s portraits are proof of this statement. His images, stripped of color, allow us to engage with the deeper emotions and stories of his subjects, where the absence of color amplifies the surreal, timeless quality of each frame.

Paul is alert and engaged from the very beginning, not just as an observer but as a participant in what’s clearly an exchange of energies. Because Paul uses analogue cameras,  his process is never hit and run. By the time the shutter clicks, his subjects’ guardedness has given way to curiosity about his scrutiny. His subjects have a lovely outsider quality; Paul may not be drawn to damage, but he’s rarely excited by uncomplicated beauty. This strikingly good-looking young woman looks like she’s just had a fight with her boyfriend, and is ready to take it out on the photographer.

Aside from the occasional out-of-town project, nearly all his work has been made in and around where he was raised. He’s a force of sincerity, which in these insincere times makes him a bit of a freak — and all the more valuable for it. This pitch of feeling is rare in his photographs. Even when he finds his subjects on an emotional phone call with a loved one, Paul is a model of restraint. Whatever emotion he’s experiencing is channelled into the work, allowing people to express themselves simply, just as they are. This steely delicacy ensures he’s careful and concerned but remains at a certain remove.

Paul zeroes in on his subjects’ vulnerability, but never exploits it. His best photographs seem caring and understanding, full of feeling but not indulgent. Of the many images in this collection, his pictures of unpopulated places and landscapes come the closest to sentimentality. In one sequence, he visits a centuries-old hotel showing its age, peering into rooms, investigating but never disturbing. Yet landscape doesn’t offer Paul the engagement that people do. It’s the portraits that find him looking as if with his whole being: penetrating, absorbing, knowing.

Follow Bennett Paul here.

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