Yet in A Winter Summer, the relationship of the two series is one of contrasts as well as connections. It was only later, after years spent photographing both in Madhya Pradesh and in Kashmir, that Sohrab realized it could be fruitful to look together at these two extreme landscapes – not only distinct environmental landscapes, but also distinct socio-economic and political landscapes – and juxtapose his observation of these landscapes through different extreme seasons. On the decision to present them together, he reflected: “I think the summer work was just waiting for its winter partner to move ahead together.”

In Sparrows, Sohrab’s camera is so still, that some of the figures in the images have become blurs. Their hazy traces are distinct from the solidly rounded backs of men in Snow, draped in wool coats, turning away from his lens. Other figures, young and old, gather to play, pray, and work; the series is about the passage of time. There is the first sprinkling of snow, the heavy blanket of snow, and, finally, the melting snow. These images were made on many trips to Kashmir from 2015 to 2019. Politics and religion are present, but Sohrab has described this series as more about listening, rather than telling. He has listened as his friends have shared stories about their experiences, and has visually expressed elements of those memories. The photographs contain hints that not everything is “all right,” in Sohrab’s words. Cracks run through the ice that has formed on a stream; a couple visits a graveyard; a man’s face is obscured by smoke; and holes, like gaping wounds, penetrate each blanket hung on a line. In isolation, the images may be read as depictions of ordinary scenes, but together they refer to something larger. In the child holding his eye, we see other children who have been harmed by stray ammunition; the shoes left by the doorway or discarded clothing caught on barbed wire might recall absent family members.

Five years ago, in the fall of 2020, Sohrab sent me a postcard. The card arrived during a period in which many people were spending time indoors, masked, secluded from others, in the first months of the Covid 19 pandemic. But in the image on Sohrab’s card there was a crowd of people of different ages, gathered together on a hill under a pale sky. The grass and other plants scattered through the crowd were a deep shade of green. The picture, Sohrab explained, was from Pati. “They are turning their desert into a forest and wanted to let others know,” he wrote. An arid village had become verdant. Trees were growing.