A long, slow, deliberately analogue thing. He photographs strangers. He prints the photos. He posts them home, by hand, from whichever post office happens to be open. 2,400+ have gone out. A few hundred have written back.
Hi Ananya — found your
photo on the road.
Thank you for letting me
steal a moment.
— A.
It began in 2017. A fisherman in Kollam asked Ashik to send him a copy of the photo he’d just taken. Ashik printed it, put it in an envelope, mailed it. The man framed it and put it in his living room.
One thank-you became a habit. The habit became the work. Today, every shoot ends the same way: Ashik writes the names down in a small black book, the prints go out from the next post office he can find, and the letters sometimes come back.
For the shepherds in the high pastures of Pir Panjal. The kids in the apple-blossom orchards in Kashmir. The Khasi grandmother whose face he photographed on a misty bridge in Meghalaya. The chai shop owner in Jaipur. They all got their print.
Names changed in some cases, full towns kept where the recipients said yes. Each one made by hand from a real post office, real ink, real envelope.
Every quarter, Ashik sends 50 hand-written postcards to people on his newsletter list. Not advertising. Not a newsletter exactly. Just a postcard from the road. If you’d like one in the mail, leave your address.