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“I wanted to capture people who are living on the edge of society and are still content with their minimal existence. In other words, it is breaking the stereotypical ideas about Canadians,” says Trattles. Looking at a photograph that has an Elvis Presley look-alike singing in a bar, he says, “This was taken in Inuvik, 2,000 km from Ottawa where I stay. Hardly anyone ever comes here because it is off the map. This man insisted he was Elvis Presley and even his driver’s licence said so.”
Trattles would occasionally take chartered flights to criss-cross the world, but mostly he bikes to meet people “who are not concerned whether they are doctors or not. They have gone to the middle of nowhere and carved out an existence for themselves”. Like the fishermen on Fogo Island. Not that Trattles did not encounter hunger or despair at these places, but he consciously chose to leave that aside and focus on the positives. “I want to talk about inclusiveness rather than poverty,” he says. The man, who earlier documented the Muslim women boxers of Kolkata and unemployed Germans living as full-time cowboys, will be biking down to Chennai from Delhi later this month — perhaps for another adventure in black and white.
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