Randeep Maddoke

Randeep has grown up in a Dalit Landless family of village Maddoke, in Moga district of Punjab, where he started drawing and sending these artworks to the literary and art festivals organized by radical left groups. Here he got appreciation and encouragement that drove him to work more into the art field. As an activist Randeep traveled by bicycle from village to village to organize meetings on agricultural labor and farmers’ rights. He also joined a theatre group. He could only study up to class 12 due to poor financial conditions of his family. Having quit the further studies in 2004, he did what most of the boys with similar family backgrounds did -working as an agriculture laborer, daily wager in town or as a wall-painter in house construction.

He completed his studies from Government College of Arts, Chandigarh with specialization in Graphics (Printmaking). He documented the class struggle of Dalits in Punjab, Haryana, and Tamil Nadu to study the practice and effects of caste. In 2008 he went to Nepal to document the making of the democratic Republic out of the monarchical Nepal. Their too he located the threads of casteism and the resistance thereof. He made a documentary film Landless about caste based discrimination, communal violence in Punjab.

Despite the struggle to earn a living he kept on looking for avenues to express through art. Over a period of time, Randeep found an advertisement in a newspaper about Government College of Arts, Chandigarh. At the age of thirty and an eight years into union activism, he decided to appear in the entrance examination and eventually he got admission in this institution. To continue his studies in this college he sold a part of the land from his family property. Thus he began his study in BFA with Graphic Print course from the given options and he chose photography as an additional subject, to practice photography he borrowed a camera from an activist friend. Spent four years in this institute finally, he graduated from the college. During this, he realised that his main interest was in photography. So he decided to go ahead with photography as a profession as well as a way to express his ideas. He got a job as Photojournalist in Haryana Review (under Public Relations & Information Department, State Government of Haryana), Chandigarh (April 2008 to April 2014). In 2010 Randeep made a short documentary film ‘Meri Pehchan’ produced by Directorate of Census Operations, Government of Haryana, (18 minutes).