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.

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.”

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 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.

Taking dirty pictures is my job

Newspaper photography is a grind on more occasions than it is glamorous.

If there’s one thing my professional visits to drains and cess-pits has taught me, is respect for those who wallow in them every day

It was during one of my morning walks that I overheard two 40-somethings yabbering on, between rasping breathlessness, about how media photographers have a field day shooting celebrities day in, day out.
But, it got me thinking…do most readers share this sentiment? If they do, then I have to set the record straight. Newspaper photography is a grind on more occasions than it is glamorous (if it ever is).
Recently, during the tragic incident of the young Abhishek who was swept away in a storm water drain, DNA’s photographers had to get down and dirty in a storm water drain in order to convey to readers the dimensions of these uncovered dangers.
Later, after a daring robbery, the same photographers clambered down a narrow hole — used by the thieves — to bring the derring-do of the act into focus. Apart from our grossly under-appreciated conservancy workers and intrepid fire-fighters most Bangaloreans would baulk at the idea of clambering into a stench-ridden canal of slime, but for photographers it’s just another day on the job.
The thing is, the images that these forays into the garbage-filled underbelly of the city provide are not exception — rather, they are the rule. Following the BBMP around as it makes its circuitous course of the city — above and below ground — doing and at times, shirking its job of keeping the city hygienic is a photographer’s job, for most of the time. After all if you don’t walk by their side, how will you be there to document it when they fail.
Which brings me back to the two ‘dialectics’ pondering the ‘glorious job’ of the city’s news photographers. To simply stand by and listen to their ill-informed opinions was far beyond my natural instinct. So I walked up to them, introduced myself, and told them that I too was a photographer.
I asked one of the men what he would do if he had the misfortune of living or working next to an overflowing sewer or a pile of uncleared garbage. He told me he would go to the nearest civic office and request the authorities to clear it up. And if that failed? I asked. Well, he said, then he would go higher deeper into the bureaucratic labyrinth. And if that too met with failure? He would then go to his local newspaper, so that they could highlight the issue.
I smiled and told him that in order to highlight the issue at hand, the newspaper would first need a photograph of the errant stick-pile, and that brought us right back to the ‘glamour boys and girls’. Dirt and delving into it, I told him, is part of a photographer’s life. Celebrities and hip parties were merely the sideshow.
If there’s one thing my professional visits to drains and cess-pits has taught me, is respect for those who wallow in them every day, out of compulsion, rather than choice. Our conservancy workers get no bylines for their job. They don’t complain about the sorry lack of equipment, and they are rarely recognised by the people they serve, which is you and I.
So although I may love to correct someone’s facts, I also know that there are those who can’t. And this column, more than anything else, is a salute to those brave souls.

I once saw the sun, but not anymore

As Bangalore metamorphosed from a farming community to a tech-savvy metropolis, out ability to view the solar orb from every roof top in the city soon diminished

On most occasions interacting with old friends from the same fraternity is an enriching experience. During one such discussion a friend asked me if today’s photographer had the wherewithal to capture a sunrise or sunset, as his compatriot could back in the 70s and 80s? I shook my head in the negative.

As Bangalore metamorphosed from a farming community to a tech-savvy metropolis, out ability to view the solar orb from every roof top in the city soon diminished. As realtors and those flogging an Icarus agenda reached for the sky, the city’s skyscape was soon blotted out by concrete giants.

My mind meandered back to childhood days when I watched the sun rise and set from my Baldwin Boy’s School hostel window. Later on, in the 80s and 90s, I would sit on the banks of Ulsoor Lake, along with many victims of Cupid’s arrow, and watch the setting sun.

It was during one of these pensive moments that I captured an image of the sun setting ‘neath the horizon. It may have made the front page, but when I was asked by the editor to shoot another ‘city connect’ picture with a touch of twilight in it, I was nervous. In the 80s the era of the all-colour newspaper was just a glint in a publisher’s eye. I was stumped as to how I was going to get the twilight spectrum conveyed through greyscale.

I left the office at 5.15pm and wandered the streets looking for that definitive, and far too often, elusive, picture. At last, around 6pm when I reached Ulsoor Lake I photographed a couple in a paddle boat, with the setting sun looming over them like a protective saint. It was good enough for me, and thankfully, good enough for my editor too.

Years later, when I returned to the city after a series of jaunts that took me across the country, I returned to Ulsoor Lake. I was hoping to capture the past in the setting sun, and in doing so return to the less frenetic roots of the photographer. But where once I could see the lake sprawled, glistening, before me, I now had concrete behemoths blocking the last rays of a sun bidding us its daily farewell. The colours were still there, the vibrancy still pulsed, but it was no longer seen by any mortal. It was now meant for the stone guardians of the city. I realised then, that in the new Bangalore, nature’s colours would only be appreciated in memory.

I return home and reach for my old photographs, they show a city I once knew and still love. My memories are intact, my son, however, will just have to take my word for it.

Snapshots of destruction: Photographing the floods

DNA’s photjournalists ran, walked, drove, and paddled their way across North Karnataka, pipping everyone to the pictorial post

The drizzle became a downpour, as levees broke across North Karnataka and floods washed away a million hopes and dreams. Newspapers awoke to the calamitous news beaming from every TV, and the race to find the best angle to a story already told began.

It was then that my colleague Mohan Kumar BN came up with an idea that eventually proved to be brilliant, in that it gave us the edge over our friendly rivals. “Send us out there,” he told me, “and let’s go now.” He, of course, became the first to volunteer to go out into the maelstrom, as it were.

Over the next six days, DNA’s photojournalists ran, walked, drove, and paddled their way across North Karnataka, pipping everyone to the pictorial post. Images flooded in from Raichur, Bellary et al, encompassing the human tragedy that unfolded.

Sending photographers into the field is only half the job, ensuring that their images get through to the office via water-logged lines and unreliable power supplies is the other half. Most of the districts they visited had lost electricity, and many villages had been sent back to the pre-Internet days

The day after Mohan left, the full extent of the flood damage became apparent and we decided to send in another photographer. Anantha Subramanyam K was rushed to the site in an IAF chopper ferrying relief material. Road were virtually non-existent.

And as the images ‘flooded’ in another problem began to rear its irksome head. When selecting photographs that depict a natural catastrophe, a photo editor must keep two things in mind: the context of the picture and the Breakfast Test. The context must suit the news; gratuitous images of sorrow and devastation don’t always match the context. The Breakfast Test is quite simple. You imagine a family sitting at their breakfast table, and then ask yourself: “Would you like to see that image while you’re eating your breakfast?” If not then the picture doesn’t make the front page (there are exceptions to this rule, however, but that’s another column).

Ensuring that our paper stood out from the rest of the print pack was a tough task; it was one of those times when everyone is bringing their A-game to the table. I learned the art of picture editing from Julie Elman, former picture editor at The Missourian, and AFP Picture editors Emmeanuel Dunnand and Christophe Archambault, and this proved to be time well spent. All three told me that picture editors have to chop, crop, and many times drop good images to suit readers’ interests. And with photo essays this maxim is even more important as one has to look at the overall sequencing of images, which in the final output should complement each other.

After Anantha and Mohan, Nishant Ratnakar and Selvaparakash L were dispatched to capture the human angle to this catastrophe. They did so with aplomb.

An editor is only as good as his team, and I salute my boys and the job they did during these dark hour in Karnataka’s history. I also take this opportunity to thank the IAF and others who pitched in to help us out.