I am a documentary photographer, photo educator and an independent publisher. I published a book titled UNSUNG in 2007. It tells the stories of seemingly ordinary people who have made extraordinary contributions to society against great personal odds. Their stories are inspirational. They teach us how can we beat all odds if we harness and channel our inner resources. It was about five years in the making and, like many of the stories it chronicles, it was produced against many odds. The book features black and white images me and text by the well-known journalist Anita Pratap.
UNSUNG has received rave reviews and made a great impact on the lives of the Heroes featured.
- Till date the book has helped in raising over Rs.90 lakhs (USD 150000.00) to the causes of some of the heroes featured in the book.
- Chewang Norphel. K M Chinnappa, Rangasamy Elango and Subhashini Mistry have won CNN-IBN real heroes award.
- Hasnath Mansur, Lakshman Singh, Chewang Norphel and Subhashini Mistry have won Harmony Silver Award from Harmony for Silvers Foundation.
- Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore has instituted UNSUNG lecture series. Heroes featured in the book are invited to IIM-B to address and interact with a group of students.
Inspired by the success of UNSUNG and supported by a couple of philanthropists I am on the verge of publishing the second volume – UNSUNG – Extraordinary Lives. It will feature stories of another eight Unsung Heroes from across India. The first volume was supported by corporations such as Infosys, Vodafone, Cnn_IBN, Brigade Group, Mahindra & Mahindra, Mindtree among others. The second volume has been funded by individual donors. I have now set up a crowd funding platform to raise money to print the book. Here is a link to the page. Money raised will be used to print the book and give a small honorarium to the writers. Please do contribute and help publish a good book and please do help spread the word!
Please follow me on twitter @maheshbhat
