A Lens for Life

Rana Siddiqui Zaman | NT

Bengaluru: The years 2010 to 2014 saw the rise of a photographer from Bengaluru. More than his immensely colourful and warm local pictures of markets, people, homes and more, his unusual name turned heads towards him – Cop Shiva.

It was certainly a great promotional strategy. And the name he adapted was not just a marketing gimmick, but something to do with his job that he quit but could not forget the love of it.

Cop Shiva was a constable in Karnataka Police in Bengaluru for 17 years (2010 – 2017) then as Shivaraju B S, his real, that barely any one knows him with, in the professional or photographic fraternity.

He quit in 2018 because “so much was happening around, so many photography residencies, exhibitions, shows” and he needed more time to answer his love for the lenses.

Shiva started visiting art galleries especially 1 Shanthiroad Studio Gallery in Bengaluru and that opened up a new world to him.

Documenting life

He used to meet so many artists, photographers, art residencies, and foreign nationals. He started taking them for trips to show Bengaluru’s own courtyard – the markets, homes, people, culture, personal artistic spaces and so on.

“Alongside, I started documenting my own city in all possible colours.” He never had to go beyond Karnataka to find stories in photos.

“I always wondered why people go on long trips before they discover their own city, its culture, people etc. I did that. I clicked people, my mother, children, the flower market the fish markets, the culture, street temples and so on.”

In no time galleries, hungry for some Indianness in their shows, noticed Cop Shiva. With it came glory. In 2012 he had a solo in Gallery Samukha in Bengaluru, and a residency in 2013.

In the year 2014, none other than the Doyen of Indian theatre and photography Ebrahim Alkazi’s art gallery Art Heritage, run by his daughter Amal Allana, an ex-chairperson of the National School of Drama, Delhi, invited him for a solo show in Delhi.

Alkazi’s Photography Foundation is the biggest in India, which has a legacy of photography in Greater Kailash New Delhi, Cop Shiva still feels butterflies in his stomach as he recalls Alkazi visiting his show and glued onto his pictures.

“I was blessed by him. I can’t tell you what I felt. I had arrived in life.” Alkazi died in 2020 at 94. And that's true. Shiva never looked back after that.

Galleries in and out of the country and residencies started doing his shows. Warm Indian photography brought him name, fame, knowledge and grounded-ness.

These days cop Shiva is on seventh sky. He has just received Lakshmi Mittal Visiting Fellowship to go to Harvard University. He is leaving in few days, where he would be there for a few months. 

Family life

“I have my mamma, and two sisters. I am married to my camera,’ laughs Shiva who feels “18 at 45 now”. Shiva has now moved his own home at Bannikuppe village in Ramanagram, Karnataka.

Income with photography is meagre but “we don’t need too much to live. I have some land and so many stories in every shop, every home, every street, our culture, festivals.”

And this, he puts aptly, photographers from abroad come to find in India, often fed up of the sameness in their nations, while several Indian photographers try finding stories abroad and return to discover newer stories back home.

So, what’s the difference between a cop and an artist, “Just the uniform”, he laughs like a child, adding, “I have learnt to respect uniformed men due to my job”.