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Postcolonial Visuality in Climate Crisis Photography: Representing Small-Scale Paddy Farmers of Dhamtari District, Chhattisgarh Through a Sustainability Lens

Dr. Rahul Shakya

Assistant Professor, School of Still Photography

AAFT University of Media & Arts, Raipur

rahul.shakya@aaft.edu.in

Abstract

Small-scale paddy farmers in the drought-prone villages of Dhamtari district, Chhattisgarh, represent one of India’s most climate-vulnerable agricultural populations. Their lived realities—shaped by unpredictable rainfall, declining groundwater levels, and repeated crop losses—are frequently communicated to the public through climate crisis photography. However, despite the increasing global reliance on visual narratives to convey climate urgency, the representation of these farmers is seldom examined through a critical theoretical lens. This paper explores how categories of climate imagery produced by NGOs, environmental campaigns, international media, and sustainability organisations construct the identity, agency, and vulnerability of Dhamtari’s small-scale farmers.

Drawing upon Postcolonial Theory (Spivak, Bhabha, Said), Visual Culture Studies, and Sustainability Communication frameworks, this research demonstrates that such photographs often operate within inherited colonial visual structures, reinforcing subalternity and limiting farmer agency. Instead of portraying farmers as knowledgeable ecological actors, the imagery frequently frames them as passive victims or symbolic figures of suffering. Through a theoretical methodology grounded in semiotic interpretation and critical discourse analysis, the paper studies patterns across categories of images—such as drought-awareness campaigns, food security posters, and news photo-stories—without analysing any specific copyrighted photographs.

The analysis reveals that visual tropes such as exoticisation, eco-romanticism, and victim framing continue to dominate sustainability communication. These tropes risk reducing complex agricultural challenges to emotionally charged but oversimplified narratives. The paper argues that such representations influence public perception, humanitarian response, and policy-making by privileging external interpretations of climate hardship over farmer-centred understanding.

The study concludes that ethical, decolonial visual storytelling is essential to climate communication. It calls for imagery that foregrounds the resilience, indigenous ecological knowledge, adaptive strategies, and agency of small-scale paddy farmers in Dhamtari, offering pathways for more just, accurate, and sustainability-aligned representation.

Keywords: Sustainable Development Goals, Postcolonial visuality, Climate communication narratives, visual communication, Semiotic interpretation.