Poor man's fishing boats. Madras Beach, India.
Some people live for fishing. I have a nephew like that. But in much of the world people fish, not for fun, but for a living.
When I walked down to the beach at Madras at sunrise that January morning in 1992, I noticed several piles of oddly shaped logs just above the tide line. Within a few minutes, some young men appeared and began binding those logs together with ropes to form crude, boat-shaped rafts. They quickly launched their rafts through the surf, hopped aboard, stepped small masts and sails, and began fishing.
India, as 'most everyone knows, has some of the world's poorest people. These young men were not just fishing for fun or for a living -- they were fishing for subsistence. No sleek boats or powerful motors -- just rafts made of buoyant logs. Fishing the way their fathers and grandfathers and generations before them had fished.
Lashing the logs together to make a boat.
Indians are some the world's most intelligent people, but are held back by a religious and political system that denies opportunity to many. When they come to a free country such as America, many thrive. But for the millions in India and many other countries, life is about subsistence.
About the photographs: Top -- Pentax 6x7, Kodak EPP film. Bottom -- Olympus OM2n or OMPC, Fujichrome 100D film.
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Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.
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