Centralia (2010-20) is a docu-fiction that journeys into the forests of central India, where an under-reported and complex conflict between the Indian state and Maoist insurgents has waged for over fifty years. Combining a range of image types – from crime scene views and found testimonies to staged portraiture and landscape photography – Centralia reveals the mechanics of a conflict as viewed from multiple perspectives, in turn exploring the limitations of traditional documentary photography and the ways in which our perceptions of reality can be manipulated. Shedding light on issues of environmental degradation, police brutality, violations against female and Indigenous rights and the state’s suppression of voices of resistance, Basu further addresses the skewed representations of contemporary conflicts by Western mainstream media.
