Pradip Malde

From Where Loss Comes

Charcoal Press is pleased to announce From Where Loss Comes, the first major monograph by Pradip Malde. Purchase the book

From Where Loss Comes is an unblinking look at how sacrifice and belonging are deeply rooted in the human experience. Sixty photographs and close to 9,000 words consider a pain and suffering that is private, sacrificial, and yet rattles against values that are thought of as being inalienable — our fundamental human rights. It is a story of the root causes of female genital cutting and mutilation (FGM/C).

Scar and Chaos, Msisi village, near Singida, Tanzania, 2018

Grece Robert suffered complications from being cut while an infant and had to undergo corrective surgery when she was eight. She met Jazira Ramadhani while at the hospital, who was also suffering from similar problems and going through corrective surgery.

In much of Africa and Southwest Asia, Female Genital Mutilation has been practiced for centuries. The exact origins of cutting are unknown and have evolved in disparate cultures as a tribal ritual, a rite of passage, or as a religious practice. For photographer Pradip Malde the practice of cutting is a symptom of a deeper cultural significance: “We have a huge genetic desire to protect ourselves through communities,” he says. “We want to clearly delineate and we want to protect ourselves from outsiders. And one way of building a psychological fence around those who are closest to us is by terrorizing them.”

Separate, Together, Mundemu, Tanzania, 2017

Cutting trees, under which genital cutting procedures and ceremonies were performed.

From Where Loss Comes is Pradip Malde’s attempt to answer the question, “why do we inflict violence on those who are close to us in order for them to stay close to us.” Malde, who spent his early childhood in Tanzania, began this inquiry after visiting the country again in 2016. He met Sarah Mwaga (to whom the book is dedicated), a prominent anti-FGM/C activist, who showed Malde a hand-forged cutting tool. Together they conceived the idea of Malde using photographs of cutting tools as a means to document and educate within local communities. Malde, whose practice is often centered around community and violence, explains that he has always used photography, “as a healing process, and for setting up a stronger glue between members of a community.” 

Occlusion, Acacia Tortilis, Endala Site, Lake Manyara, Tanzania, 2018

“The spirits took me to a forest and showed me some herbs and how to use them to apply to FGM wounds to make them heal quickly. Then they told me to start the job immediately with close relatives.” Margareth Ngallya, a retired ngariba.

Ours is a Shield, Mtinko near Singida, Tanzania, 2018

Retired ngariba Amina Hadiya and anti-FGM activist Christowaja Japhet.

With the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the University of the South and the Appalachian College Association, Malde traveled back and forth to Tanzania between 2017-2019. Through Sarah Mwaga, Malde was welcomed into his subjects’ lives with confidence. The majority of the women he photographed where ngarabi (Swahili for circumcisers) who now wanted to be a part of communal change. Along with each photograph Malde includes interviews, poems and notes from the field. The viewer is confronted with the impossible choice faced by these women: to lose a part of themselves and be in community, or remain whole and be an outcaste. Through the process of holding the book, of reading and viewing the image, Malde’s hope is that we “excavate the links between loss and love.” 

From Where Loss Comes was photographed with an 8×10 camera, then contact printed with the platinum-palladium printing-out process to achieve a unique and beautiful print.

For Malde, beauty is central to a communal path out of FGM/C and is embedded in the philosophy underpinning the work. “To be reminded of beauty through sensations of pleasure is much better then being reminded of being selfless and dedicated to others through pain,” he says, adding that,  “if loss comes from pain and suffering true hope and love comes from experiences of beauty.”