The print media as seen a sea change over the past two decades from the typical newsroom sound of tapping tickers and typewriters, to the present day buzz of CPUs all humming to a technological conductor.
‘New Photojournalism’ has also seen an impressive change from the good old days of time-consuming film-based, dark-room processed and printed SLR camera photography to the present day digital time-saving D-SLR photography. This shift in technology has added more responsibilities to present day photojournalists, forcing them to give an increasing number of concept-based pictures to suit a report and ensure it has a clear edge over rivals in the newspaper market.
With fixed lens digital cameras and mobile phone cameras flooding the market in large quantities the age of the citizen photojournalist has truly arrived, and it’s here to stay, eventually replacing the professional news photographer.
Amateur photographers have been highly-prized for decades. Take for instance Abraham Zapruder’s motion pictures of the assassination of John F Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, which fetched him $150,000 in those days. Then you have the citizen photojournalism images taken of the London tube bombings where a citizen pulled his mobile camera to film people escaping from smoke-filled bogeys soon after a blast rocked London’s mass transport system.
In yet another incident a 17-year-old was paid a whopping $40,000 for a grainy image taken on his mobile, which was the first photograph taken of one of the cars used in the London bombings. It showed a Green Mercedes parked outside the Tiger nightclub in Haymarket, and next to it, one of the gas canisters that the car contained.
And now Reuters and Yahoo! have jumped on the citizen photojournalism bandwagon with gusto; in the hope of turning millions of people with digital cameras and camera phones into citizen photojournalists. These image will be distributed, through a special package, to hundreds of print, online and broadcast media subscribers across the world.
The professionals who deal in breaking news have a big problem on their hands in the future, one with which they can’t possibly compete. When the tools of creation and access are so profoundly democratised, the best professionals fight a losing battle to save their careers.
Like Kyle McRae the founder of Scoopt, one of the first citizen photojournalism online stock libraries (who later sold its collection to Getty images) had said: "Because the potential, or the reality, is that the first person on the scene is going to be you or me or somebody like us. It's not going to be a professional photographer or a news journalist. So it's not enough for you and me to dedicate the rest of our lives to chasing down news stories. We do need the power of the crowd."
Monday, December 14, 2009
In the race against time, a question of ethics
Modern newspapers work to a clock that deals in seconds and minutes, rather than days or weeks, and so must photographers
In the previous week’s column we discussed how the digitalisation of photography has changed the face of photojournalism and how this has, at times, had the photographer at an ethical crossroads.
Modern newspapers work to a clock that deals in seconds and minutes, rather than days or weeks, and so must photographers. Gone are the days when a photographer could spend a few days searching for that perfect picture, not as rails against time, he sometimes has to rely on sheer talent and luck to get a printable photograph. These time constraints can sometimes force him to chose an unethical path, doctoring or embellishing an image to suit the editorial.
There has been a trend of late in the print media where photographers are increasingly asked to concentrate on the aesthetics of composition, rather than content. Their roles have become akin to creative visualisers rather than documenters of news. Celebrities, lifestyle and other ‘soft’ topics have become the rule, and social photography the exception.
Take the case of the photojournalist who was asked to cover a fashion show in the morning, and then a portrait of losing mayoral candidate just one hour later. The photojournalist needs time to move from one frame of mind from where lighting plays a major role while snapping pictures of models sashaying down a ramp to another, where a man is at one of life’s many cusps. If he’s not careful, he could end up with a sashaying politician.
Many say the camera cannot lie, and that is true only in the sense that the images it captures must have existed in one form or another in time. But it is not always clear if those images have been manipulated to alter, or to stage an event that never actually happened. Staging a photograph only adds insult to the already injured ethics of photojournalism, and it is all the more injurious when one knows that ‘staging’ has been done by some of the finest photographers in the world.
Though photographers in the West have suffered its fair share of lapses on the ethical front, in India, it has become an epidemic. In one of the most macabre incidents, three of the country’s top photographers dug up a four-day-old grave of a small boy to highlight the catastrophe of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. That the boy was in no way connected to the event seemed to not have bothered them in the least.
Digitally manipulating a photograph is as bad as staging one. Digital manipulation is relatively easy to accomplish, hard to detect, and perhaps more alarming, is that the alteration takes place in the original image, hence checking authenticity is virtually impossible. This is why courts these days tend not to use photographs as evidence, and why they probably won’t do so in the future either.
Photographers will use numerous arguments to defend themselves. They’ll say reporters cook up quotes, sub-editors use blatantly misleading headlines, and feature writers plagiarise, but there’s really no excuse…for any of the above. The reader is your god, and if you fail him, then there truly will be hell to pay.
In the previous week’s column we discussed how the digitalisation of photography has changed the face of photojournalism and how this has, at times, had the photographer at an ethical crossroads.
Modern newspapers work to a clock that deals in seconds and minutes, rather than days or weeks, and so must photographers. Gone are the days when a photographer could spend a few days searching for that perfect picture, not as rails against time, he sometimes has to rely on sheer talent and luck to get a printable photograph. These time constraints can sometimes force him to chose an unethical path, doctoring or embellishing an image to suit the editorial.
There has been a trend of late in the print media where photographers are increasingly asked to concentrate on the aesthetics of composition, rather than content. Their roles have become akin to creative visualisers rather than documenters of news. Celebrities, lifestyle and other ‘soft’ topics have become the rule, and social photography the exception.
Take the case of the photojournalist who was asked to cover a fashion show in the morning, and then a portrait of losing mayoral candidate just one hour later. The photojournalist needs time to move from one frame of mind from where lighting plays a major role while snapping pictures of models sashaying down a ramp to another, where a man is at one of life’s many cusps. If he’s not careful, he could end up with a sashaying politician.
Many say the camera cannot lie, and that is true only in the sense that the images it captures must have existed in one form or another in time. But it is not always clear if those images have been manipulated to alter, or to stage an event that never actually happened. Staging a photograph only adds insult to the already injured ethics of photojournalism, and it is all the more injurious when one knows that ‘staging’ has been done by some of the finest photographers in the world.
Though photographers in the West have suffered its fair share of lapses on the ethical front, in India, it has become an epidemic. In one of the most macabre incidents, three of the country’s top photographers dug up a four-day-old grave of a small boy to highlight the catastrophe of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. That the boy was in no way connected to the event seemed to not have bothered them in the least.
Digitally manipulating a photograph is as bad as staging one. Digital manipulation is relatively easy to accomplish, hard to detect, and perhaps more alarming, is that the alteration takes place in the original image, hence checking authenticity is virtually impossible. This is why courts these days tend not to use photographs as evidence, and why they probably won’t do so in the future either.
Photographers will use numerous arguments to defend themselves. They’ll say reporters cook up quotes, sub-editors use blatantly misleading headlines, and feature writers plagiarise, but there’s really no excuse…for any of the above. The reader is your god, and if you fail him, then there truly will be hell to pay.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
The noughties and the age of photographic digitisation
Visual messages have the power to persuade, educate and entertain and thus put a great responsibility on the photographer
It may have been 1993, when American photojournalists got their hands on the Digital Lens Reflex (D-SLR) camera in large numbers, but it was way back in 1973 that the technology was created by Kodak in Rochester, New York.
Kodak’s body was big and scary enough to put any professional ill at ease. This, however, was the R&D model and nowhere near what it would look like when it entered mass production.
The first commercial digital SLR (Kodak DCS-100) was launched in 1991, it had a modified Nikon F3 SLR body, a modified drive unit with an external storage unit connected via a cable, and a 1.3 megapixel that cost a whopping $30,000.
Through the decade (1990 to 1999) numerous players jumped into the digital photography market: Canon, Nikon, Kodak, Pentax, Fuji to name a few. But in 1999, it was Nikon that took the lead with the launch of the Nikon D1, which marked the beginning of the end of the film camera era (I was very lucky to have used the D1 in its launch year during my stint with a newspaper in North India, though it was only meant for very important assignments).
In India, forward-thinking newspapers — which up until than had been using negative scanners or print scanners for pictures to be digitally transferred on to their Quark pages — grabbed at this opportunity by ensuring that their respective photo departments went digital. But it was only in mid-2002, when Nikon launched the D-100, that the death rattle of film, turned into rigor mortis.
Newspapers that hadn’t cottoned onto the virtues of digital photography now swiftly converted to D-SLR in the hope that by cutting down on film purchase and printing they would in turn cut overall costs. It worked, and the shift would become a pivotal moment in the publishing industry.
But with the invasion of technology into the artistic field came with it a crisis of ethics and photography took a hammering. Images started appearing having been digitally manipulated to catch the viewer’s eye.
Visual messages have the power to persuade, educate and entertain and thus put a great responsibility on the photographer. Take for instance some of the recent images taken after the advent of D-SLR and Adobe’s Photoshop; an increasing number of manipulated pictures have started to find space on magazine covers, in newspapers and on wire services.
But ethics in photography is a whole other column
It may have been 1993, when American photojournalists got their hands on the Digital Lens Reflex (D-SLR) camera in large numbers, but it was way back in 1973 that the technology was created by Kodak in Rochester, New York.
Kodak’s body was big and scary enough to put any professional ill at ease. This, however, was the R&D model and nowhere near what it would look like when it entered mass production.
The first commercial digital SLR (Kodak DCS-100) was launched in 1991, it had a modified Nikon F3 SLR body, a modified drive unit with an external storage unit connected via a cable, and a 1.3 megapixel that cost a whopping $30,000.
Through the decade (1990 to 1999) numerous players jumped into the digital photography market: Canon, Nikon, Kodak, Pentax, Fuji to name a few. But in 1999, it was Nikon that took the lead with the launch of the Nikon D1, which marked the beginning of the end of the film camera era (I was very lucky to have used the D1 in its launch year during my stint with a newspaper in North India, though it was only meant for very important assignments).
In India, forward-thinking newspapers — which up until than had been using negative scanners or print scanners for pictures to be digitally transferred on to their Quark pages — grabbed at this opportunity by ensuring that their respective photo departments went digital. But it was only in mid-2002, when Nikon launched the D-100, that the death rattle of film, turned into rigor mortis.
Newspapers that hadn’t cottoned onto the virtues of digital photography now swiftly converted to D-SLR in the hope that by cutting down on film purchase and printing they would in turn cut overall costs. It worked, and the shift would become a pivotal moment in the publishing industry.
But with the invasion of technology into the artistic field came with it a crisis of ethics and photography took a hammering. Images started appearing having been digitally manipulated to catch the viewer’s eye.
Visual messages have the power to persuade, educate and entertain and thus put a great responsibility on the photographer. Take for instance some of the recent images taken after the advent of D-SLR and Adobe’s Photoshop; an increasing number of manipulated pictures have started to find space on magazine covers, in newspapers and on wire services.
But ethics in photography is a whole other column
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Keep still, can moving pictures ever tell the full story?
Over the decades the talk has been about how television and all its trappings, are sounding the death knell for photography
August 19, 1839 is the day Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, Joseph Nicephere Niepec and Henry Fox Talbot are credited with ‘discovering’ photography. They would have borne a perplexed look had you told them then that their innovation would lead to motion pictures, courtesy Frenchman Louis Lumiere, aptly nicknamed Cinematographe.
Lumiere’s pathbreaking invention debuted in 1895, but even if you subscribe to the view that it was Edison, rather than Lumiere who invented the motion picture, you can’t deny that without still photography, movies would have been but a glint in a producer’s eye.
Enough with the history lesson, and down to some fighting talk. Over the decades the talk has been about how television and all its trappings, are sounding the death knell for photography. But proponents of that theory forget one niggling factor, that photographers have virtually no margin for error. And out of a lack of margin, often comes excellence. The ability to capture a scene or an emotion in one frame is not one to be taken lightly.
Take for instance the Godra riots. Although TV channels beamed graphic images 24x7 into living rooms across the country, it was the photograph by Arko Dutta, of a man with folded hands, blood-stained shirt and tears welling in his eyes that captured the world’s imagination and struck a blow that rocked our moral turpitude. In 2005, Arko, incidentally won the WPP award for his picture of a tsunami survivor weeping by a dead relative on a beach in Cuddalore.
In the modern era the intense competitiveness between the TV cameraman and the photographer has increased manifold with both vying for better space and an insight into the human condition
In the modern era the intense competitiveness between the TV cameraman and the photographer has increased manifold with both vying for better space and an insight into the human condition. A TV cameraman’s job is more strenuous than that of a print photographer in that his images have to follow the reporter’s thread, and at times have to tell a story on their own. Print photographers have to be more aesthetic, constantly looking to capture passion and emotion. Photographers, however, must remember that their image have a much longer shelf-life, and hence to be qualitatively superior in all respects.
Talking of photographic longevity, Spencer Platt’s photograph for Getty of a convertible full of gorgeous Lebanese women, dressed to the nines, driving through a bombed-out Beirut suburb, told a million tales, that are etched into the consciousness of all those who had the pleasure of seeing it.
The argument between still and moving, however, will be one that rages for many more years. You, the reader, shall be the final judge.
August 19, 1839 is the day Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, Joseph Nicephere Niepec and Henry Fox Talbot are credited with ‘discovering’ photography. They would have borne a perplexed look had you told them then that their innovation would lead to motion pictures, courtesy Frenchman Louis Lumiere, aptly nicknamed Cinematographe.
Lumiere’s pathbreaking invention debuted in 1895, but even if you subscribe to the view that it was Edison, rather than Lumiere who invented the motion picture, you can’t deny that without still photography, movies would have been but a glint in a producer’s eye.
Enough with the history lesson, and down to some fighting talk. Over the decades the talk has been about how television and all its trappings, are sounding the death knell for photography. But proponents of that theory forget one niggling factor, that photographers have virtually no margin for error. And out of a lack of margin, often comes excellence. The ability to capture a scene or an emotion in one frame is not one to be taken lightly.
Take for instance the Godra riots. Although TV channels beamed graphic images 24x7 into living rooms across the country, it was the photograph by Arko Dutta, of a man with folded hands, blood-stained shirt and tears welling in his eyes that captured the world’s imagination and struck a blow that rocked our moral turpitude. In 2005, Arko, incidentally won the WPP award for his picture of a tsunami survivor weeping by a dead relative on a beach in Cuddalore.
In the modern era the intense competitiveness between the TV cameraman and the photographer has increased manifold with both vying for better space and an insight into the human condition
In the modern era the intense competitiveness between the TV cameraman and the photographer has increased manifold with both vying for better space and an insight into the human condition. A TV cameraman’s job is more strenuous than that of a print photographer in that his images have to follow the reporter’s thread, and at times have to tell a story on their own. Print photographers have to be more aesthetic, constantly looking to capture passion and emotion. Photographers, however, must remember that their image have a much longer shelf-life, and hence to be qualitatively superior in all respects.
Talking of photographic longevity, Spencer Platt’s photograph for Getty of a convertible full of gorgeous Lebanese women, dressed to the nines, driving through a bombed-out Beirut suburb, told a million tales, that are etched into the consciousness of all those who had the pleasure of seeing it.
The argument between still and moving, however, will be one that rages for many more years. You, the reader, shall be the final judge.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
On the road, life is but a blur of pictures
Towards the end of his travelogue, The Innocents Abroad, written aboard the USS Quaker City, the incorrigible wit Mark Twain noted: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” He meant it for his
American bedfellows, but the statement could apply to almost every living human being. The tourist, as the traveller has come to be known in our day and age, can be seen in almost every city. The flashes of their cameras light up nights from Rio to Tokyo.They attempt to soak in a foreign culture, using snapshots to emblazon their memories. But in the rush to capture every image, the eternal ones slip by, lost in the flash frenzy that often accompanies these wandering souls. But some see rather than simply look, and they are the true captors of heritage and life.
Take for instance, the great picture taken by amateur photographer (he was until May 18, 1980, anyway) Gary Rosenquist. His all powerful picture, taken on that day, of Mount St Helens erupting at dawn captivated the world.
It cast nature in all her fury on a canvas the size of our imaginations. The photograph was good enough to be snatched up by those two colossi of photojournalism: National Geographic and Life
magazine. Travelling is essential to great photography.
During my Reuter’s Foundation Fellowship at the Missouri University in Columbia, Missouri, I was adamant that I wouldn’t save any money. Rather, anything I had would go into travelling around the US; be it a weekend jaunt to a nearby town, or a road trip following the tyre tracks of Kerouac or the wagon trails of Steinbeck. And thanks to the Greyhound, all this was possible.
During my second week at the university, I set off to see the beautiful Lake Mykee town in Callaway County — a part of Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri. The trip, which spanned the weekend was spent in the company of my German colleague Liz Van Hooser. We went to visit her grandparents, who lived in Lake Mykee, and it turned out to be a photographer’s dream. Not only did I get to photograph the Jefferson County skyline, but spent hours walking through the vineyards, run by the Hoosers.
Another memorable trip was to Zion, where I managed to hone my still photography thanks to its wonderful 18th Century church. Then there was Carthage (not of Hannibal Barca fame) with a population of under 5,000. It’s a wonderland, aptly termed by Walt Disney as, ‘Some Place Else’. It was at Springfield that I photographed that icon of popular culture, Route 66,which runs from Chicago to New York. I also had the pleasure to meet, Larry Bornbazine (the surname means, Keeper of the Flame), a Native American. He sat next to me on the bus, and by the end of my journey, we were fast friends. He invited me to his home in Chesterfield, where I met his extended 18-member family who had gathered there for the weekend.
I offered to stay in an inn nearby, but Larry was having none of it. So I spent the weekend in their small but large-hearted home. It was to be a fortuitous meeting, as I learned volumes about a community that, up until that day, I had read about only in my school textbooks.The Bornbazine family portraits I took, are some of my most cherished.
My advice to you fellow traveller, is to ensure that you keep that small camera with you always during your travels, be it from home to office or on that trip across Europe. Who knows what the future may throw up for you to photograph.
I will end with a quote from one of the greatest travellers of his time, Jack Kerouac: “So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you.”
American bedfellows, but the statement could apply to almost every living human being. The tourist, as the traveller has come to be known in our day and age, can be seen in almost every city. The flashes of their cameras light up nights from Rio to Tokyo.They attempt to soak in a foreign culture, using snapshots to emblazon their memories. But in the rush to capture every image, the eternal ones slip by, lost in the flash frenzy that often accompanies these wandering souls. But some see rather than simply look, and they are the true captors of heritage and life.
Take for instance, the great picture taken by amateur photographer (he was until May 18, 1980, anyway) Gary Rosenquist. His all powerful picture, taken on that day, of Mount St Helens erupting at dawn captivated the world.
It cast nature in all her fury on a canvas the size of our imaginations. The photograph was good enough to be snatched up by those two colossi of photojournalism: National Geographic and Life
magazine. Travelling is essential to great photography.
During my Reuter’s Foundation Fellowship at the Missouri University in Columbia, Missouri, I was adamant that I wouldn’t save any money. Rather, anything I had would go into travelling around the US; be it a weekend jaunt to a nearby town, or a road trip following the tyre tracks of Kerouac or the wagon trails of Steinbeck. And thanks to the Greyhound, all this was possible.
During my second week at the university, I set off to see the beautiful Lake Mykee town in Callaway County — a part of Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri. The trip, which spanned the weekend was spent in the company of my German colleague Liz Van Hooser. We went to visit her grandparents, who lived in Lake Mykee, and it turned out to be a photographer’s dream. Not only did I get to photograph the Jefferson County skyline, but spent hours walking through the vineyards, run by the Hoosers.
Another memorable trip was to Zion, where I managed to hone my still photography thanks to its wonderful 18th Century church. Then there was Carthage (not of Hannibal Barca fame) with a population of under 5,000. It’s a wonderland, aptly termed by Walt Disney as, ‘Some Place Else’. It was at Springfield that I photographed that icon of popular culture, Route 66,which runs from Chicago to New York. I also had the pleasure to meet, Larry Bornbazine (the surname means, Keeper of the Flame), a Native American. He sat next to me on the bus, and by the end of my journey, we were fast friends. He invited me to his home in Chesterfield, where I met his extended 18-member family who had gathered there for the weekend.
I offered to stay in an inn nearby, but Larry was having none of it. So I spent the weekend in their small but large-hearted home. It was to be a fortuitous meeting, as I learned volumes about a community that, up until that day, I had read about only in my school textbooks.The Bornbazine family portraits I took, are some of my most cherished.
My advice to you fellow traveller, is to ensure that you keep that small camera with you always during your travels, be it from home to office or on that trip across Europe. Who knows what the future may throw up for you to photograph.
I will end with a quote from one of the greatest travellers of his time, Jack Kerouac: “So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you.”
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Politics, photography and a question of mood
Unfortunately, my camera has, at times, got me a front row seat for the soap opera, that national and state-level politics can often be
The famous military strategist, Clauzewitz, once said: War is nothing but an extension of politics. And anyone following the city’s front pages over the last week could be excused for wondering how akin the state CM’s office was to a 21st Century Stalingrad.
Unfortunately, my camera has at times got me a front row seat for the soap opera, that national and state-level politics can often be; with egos and riches being the pivots around which political worlds turn.
Money-hungry MLAs, their superegos filled with delusions of grandeur have often reached for the golden chalice, overlooking the plight of the common man, who are left to fend for themselves after pre-poll promises are ground into the dust of dishonesty.
The latest crisis to afflict Karnataka was pretty much a battle of nerves, and as I look back on the coverage across newspapers, only a few images, I feel, told the story of the crisis from a human angle.
One of these images was the one that showed the CM, sitting alone in his office, prior to leaving for New Delhi to learn his fate. It was a grim image, but the situation indeed warranted such seriousness.
Anyone following the city’s front pages over the last week could be excused for wondering how akin the state CM’s office was to a 21st Century Stalingrad.
The second picture showed BSY feeding JR. Their expressions were priceless. Both looked like they had got the better of the other, while AK’s smugness as he stood next to them spoke volumes about how the whole shenanigan had worked out for him.
Going back to the days when the state was ruled by the many avatars of the Janata Dal, I was fortunate enough to be the only local photojournalist based in New Delhi. My assignment was to keep the newspaper supplied with images every time one of the state’s politicians walked through the halls of power in the capital.
It was during this stint that Karnataka went through a period of intense political turmoil. And while the state was proverbially burning I managed to photograph the incumbent CM, JH Patel, relaxing at Karnataka Bhavan in New Delhi. I found him relaxing in bed with a plate of cucumbers and a glass of wine in his hand, while updating himself on the news on TV. The picture made the front page, and the accompanying headline was as witty, as it was pertinent: Cool as Cucumber: When the whole state burns.
But the one photograph I still cherish came from a rather unique opportunity to snap two big-time political leaders (one former chief minister who was known in political circles as the kingmaker, along with a union minister from the powerful Yadav group) standing at urinals (backs to the camera!) with their face visible on the mirror in front of them, all the while discussing how they were going to convince a humble farmer prime minister to step down and ensure they keep their front united. The newspaper ran with it in seven columns, with the classic headline: ‘Toilet Politics’.
My advice to young photographers is to keep an eye on the mood of the crises, and the pictures will follow. My advice to politicians: Service to the people is service to the gods.
The famous military strategist, Clauzewitz, once said: War is nothing but an extension of politics. And anyone following the city’s front pages over the last week could be excused for wondering how akin the state CM’s office was to a 21st Century Stalingrad.
Unfortunately, my camera has at times got me a front row seat for the soap opera, that national and state-level politics can often be; with egos and riches being the pivots around which political worlds turn.
Money-hungry MLAs, their superegos filled with delusions of grandeur have often reached for the golden chalice, overlooking the plight of the common man, who are left to fend for themselves after pre-poll promises are ground into the dust of dishonesty.
The latest crisis to afflict Karnataka was pretty much a battle of nerves, and as I look back on the coverage across newspapers, only a few images, I feel, told the story of the crisis from a human angle.
One of these images was the one that showed the CM, sitting alone in his office, prior to leaving for New Delhi to learn his fate. It was a grim image, but the situation indeed warranted such seriousness.
Anyone following the city’s front pages over the last week could be excused for wondering how akin the state CM’s office was to a 21st Century Stalingrad.
The second picture showed BSY feeding JR. Their expressions were priceless. Both looked like they had got the better of the other, while AK’s smugness as he stood next to them spoke volumes about how the whole shenanigan had worked out for him.
Going back to the days when the state was ruled by the many avatars of the Janata Dal, I was fortunate enough to be the only local photojournalist based in New Delhi. My assignment was to keep the newspaper supplied with images every time one of the state’s politicians walked through the halls of power in the capital.
It was during this stint that Karnataka went through a period of intense political turmoil. And while the state was proverbially burning I managed to photograph the incumbent CM, JH Patel, relaxing at Karnataka Bhavan in New Delhi. I found him relaxing in bed with a plate of cucumbers and a glass of wine in his hand, while updating himself on the news on TV. The picture made the front page, and the accompanying headline was as witty, as it was pertinent: Cool as Cucumber: When the whole state burns.
But the one photograph I still cherish came from a rather unique opportunity to snap two big-time political leaders (one former chief minister who was known in political circles as the kingmaker, along with a union minister from the powerful Yadav group) standing at urinals (backs to the camera!) with their face visible on the mirror in front of them, all the while discussing how they were going to convince a humble farmer prime minister to step down and ensure they keep their front united. The newspaper ran with it in seven columns, with the classic headline: ‘Toilet Politics’.
My advice to young photographers is to keep an eye on the mood of the crises, and the pictures will follow. My advice to politicians: Service to the people is service to the gods.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
The power of photography is its ability to tell it like it is
Even the best writers will attest that no matter how powerful be the prose, a picture is worth a thousand well-chosen words.
The power of photographs was once again brought into sharp focus (pun intended) after China arm-twisted the Bangladesh government into shutting down a photography exhibition entitled Tibet 1949-2009.
The exhibition, which was organised by the Students for a Free Tibet, showed a myriad of images of the Himalayan nation with all its ups and downs. The photographs were at times graphic in their depiction of an oppressive China, and on others magical in their imagery of one of the most beautiful countries on Earth.
But China doesn’t seem to be able to differentiate between the aesthetics of politics and the politics of beauty. China, and its penchant for ‘history-as-we-know-it’, however, is not up for debate here. Every country has its own way of dealing with a chequered past. This column is about the power of photographs.
Even the best writers will attest that no matter how powerful be the prose, a picture that cuts to the heart of the matter – whether jovial or devastating – is worth a thousand well-chosen words. Photographs know no language, and require the viewer to possess only one faculty: The ability to see.
Photographs have been used to document ‘the real story’ throughout most of the tumultuous 20th Century. From the Great War to Vietnam, the horrifying ability of humans to kill innocents has been portrayed with a graphic sense of foreboding. Our innate predilection for cruelty is unfathomable, and so we must keep snapping away in the hope that wisdom will someday dawn.
Photographs are apolitical in as much as they are amoral, as they should be. Like music, photographs transcend man-made barriers. They are beasts of their own device
Closer to home, my pictures have been used to bring fraudsters to book. When I worked in a national daily based in New Delhi, I was asked to cover drought-affected villagers in 1996.
On assignment I got a picture of an elderly farmer sitting in his arid farm, the soil cracked wide open by the blazing sun. The picture was published, and not long after I received a telephone call from the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). They wanted to know where exactly the picture was taken as, they claimed, the farmer in question was dead and his children had claimed the insurance money four years before this picture was taken.
They then asked me if I could take them to the farm so that they could see this modern day Lazarus for themselves. I did and they saw him, alive and kicking. Needless to say the case was kicked straight into court – the photograph used as evidence and me as a witness.
Photographs are apolitical in as much as they are amoral, as they should be. Like music, photographs transcend man-made barriers. They are beasts of their own device, and that is why governments across the world would rather choose to hide images than words. Words can be misinterpreted, but how could you say that the picture of a young Vietnamese girl, her body burned as she ran from her village, was anything short of murder.
You can’t, and neither did the American public.
The power of photographs was once again brought into sharp focus (pun intended) after China arm-twisted the Bangladesh government into shutting down a photography exhibition entitled Tibet 1949-2009.
The exhibition, which was organised by the Students for a Free Tibet, showed a myriad of images of the Himalayan nation with all its ups and downs. The photographs were at times graphic in their depiction of an oppressive China, and on others magical in their imagery of one of the most beautiful countries on Earth.
But China doesn’t seem to be able to differentiate between the aesthetics of politics and the politics of beauty. China, and its penchant for ‘history-as-we-know-it’, however, is not up for debate here. Every country has its own way of dealing with a chequered past. This column is about the power of photographs.
Even the best writers will attest that no matter how powerful be the prose, a picture that cuts to the heart of the matter – whether jovial or devastating – is worth a thousand well-chosen words. Photographs know no language, and require the viewer to possess only one faculty: The ability to see.
Photographs have been used to document ‘the real story’ throughout most of the tumultuous 20th Century. From the Great War to Vietnam, the horrifying ability of humans to kill innocents has been portrayed with a graphic sense of foreboding. Our innate predilection for cruelty is unfathomable, and so we must keep snapping away in the hope that wisdom will someday dawn.
Photographs are apolitical in as much as they are amoral, as they should be. Like music, photographs transcend man-made barriers. They are beasts of their own device
Closer to home, my pictures have been used to bring fraudsters to book. When I worked in a national daily based in New Delhi, I was asked to cover drought-affected villagers in 1996.
On assignment I got a picture of an elderly farmer sitting in his arid farm, the soil cracked wide open by the blazing sun. The picture was published, and not long after I received a telephone call from the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). They wanted to know where exactly the picture was taken as, they claimed, the farmer in question was dead and his children had claimed the insurance money four years before this picture was taken.
They then asked me if I could take them to the farm so that they could see this modern day Lazarus for themselves. I did and they saw him, alive and kicking. Needless to say the case was kicked straight into court – the photograph used as evidence and me as a witness.
Photographs are apolitical in as much as they are amoral, as they should be. Like music, photographs transcend man-made barriers. They are beasts of their own device, and that is why governments across the world would rather choose to hide images than words. Words can be misinterpreted, but how could you say that the picture of a young Vietnamese girl, her body burned as she ran from her village, was anything short of murder.
You can’t, and neither did the American public.
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