Angles Of A Photo
Click here to read this on Rasa Journal where it was first published on Dec 3, 2021.
In 2017, the New York Times commissioned a photo essay about life in Punjab’s Amritsar to a photographer based in Brooklyn, New York City, N.Y. The article begins with informing us how the shutterbug, Mark Hartman, is fascinated by Nihang Sikhs and yet none of the fifteen photos that comprise the essay show us a Nihang Sikh. Instead, what we get is parachute photojournalism that is neither visually appealing nor offers an insightful narrative.
The average pay rate for such a publication is anything between $500–1000 and can go even higher. There are perhaps hundreds of teenaged photographers in Punjab itself who could have done a much better job for a much lower price. Photojournalism and creative photography related to India such as this one is not uncommon. It is, in fact, more mainstream, especially when it comes to prominent international and sometimes even national publications.
Is it a logistics problem (“how will an editor in U.S find a local photographer across continents”), a publishing standard problem (“an American editor needs a photographer who can understand the American audience”), or something else? And most importantly, why do we see it replicated in India?
In her essay, The Ethics of Seeing, an India and U.S based photojournalist Neeta Satam writes, “Numerous photographers I have met tell me that they travel to India because they thought it was “a colorful place to photograph.” All too often, it seemed, their favorite photography destination was the banks of the Ganges, where they focused their lenses on the burning of corpses and the holy men that eat those corpses. These perspectives do nothing to challenge the clichés of India that photographers have created over decades. They reduce a multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multilingual country of 1.3 billion people into a monolith — the land of elephants, snake charmers, and holy men.”
Is it a problem of gaze, then? That is, the preconceived notions with which a photojournalist or a photographer looks at the ‘subject’. But is the ‘subject’ really just that — a subject whose agency is akin to a wild animal locked up in a zoo? Just like most of us would experience a tiger behind the bars and one in the wild differently, perhaps a camera’s ‘subject’ has the ability to exhibit similar liveliness as well. But why don’t we see more of that?
Jyothy Karat, a Bangalore based photojournalist and filmmaker, may have an insight or two. When she found herself at the coveted Visa Pour L’ image in France’s Perpignan years ago, she realized that she wasn’t the right kind of female brown photojournalist for the event. She writes of the experience, “if you are able to whine (in an American/British accent) about how hard life is as an Indian woman and back that up with projects covering regressive practices (preferably about women) in third -world countries, you may find a few (or many) knights in shining armors who will scoop you up and show you off and your work for the world to see. After all, the first world does need very many assurances that life is shit in our part of the world.”
Today, at 35, she is a filmmaker and most recently, released her documentaryabout Ice Stupas of Ladakh and climate change. However, she started her career in photography at 22 with a bang when she was selected for the popular Angkor Photo Festival workshop. She has since then also won the World Press Photo fellowship, reported from over twenty countries across the world, and has worked with publications such as The Guardian and Le Monde to name a few. But as of last couple of years, she hasn’t worked as a photojournalist.
Among other reasons, she mentions lack of enough money to sustain a comfortable life, especially when one has dependents, as one. While the regional and national publications in India don’t pay enough for photojournalism, the international ones have ready-made narratives for which they merely look for executors in native countries. “If my idea is liked, they will assign a white photojournalist and they will do the story,” Karat explains, “and I will be hired as a photographer as regular rates”. In such a scenario, a local journalist or photojournalist often ends up having to play the role of a fixer which entails fixing up sources, appointments, logistics, and the like.
“The main problem is that the Western media doesn’t see us as thought partners but skilled professionals who can execute their ideas. The worst part is that we see ourselves like that too,” she adds. She likens this sort of dynamic to the backend work done by Indian call centers for international companies.
In 2018, the editor-in-chief at National Geographic, Susan Goldberg, penned a note in which she acknowledged the magazine’s reportage as having been racist. The magazine launched in 1888 has been the undisputed leader in travel and culture journalism but has consistently featured photos along with captions such as this one.
Goldberg seemed earnest in her self-reflection and hoped her successors would be able to look at the magazine’s work during her time more favorably. Has anything changed since then? Sample the two screengrabs from recent posts on Nat Geo’s Instagram account.
Now while these photos, along with their captions, may reflect a particular reality in both Switzerland and Afghanistan, the question is whether these are the only realities of the countries in question? Obviously not but the magazine, even though it managed to adapt to the digital medium and latest platforms, clearly hasn’t caught up with the times when it comes to its photos despite ample self-awareness. However, Karat says that the National Geographic Society, which functions separately than the company’s magazine and shows, has done great work in walking the talk.
“They have given a lot of grants to female photographers, conservationists, and have given more opportunities to women from India compared to men and those from Europe,” she says. At the same time, she cautions against an over-dependence on international publications and institutions. “Where are our investors?”, she asks. Chennai Photo Biennale, for instance, is an annual photo festival that has the support of Sethu Vaidyanathan, an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist. Karat, who was on the jury for the festival’s upcoming 2021 edition, also made sure to give regional photographers an honest chance to tell their stories. “When we looked at their applications, we made sure we didn’t let bad English sway us”.
While photojournalism and photography in India suffers due to lack of money, it also has the problem of urban Indians being outsiders to not just the rural parts of their regions but rest of the country as well. For that reason, Ayan Ghosh, 39, visual researcher and the de-facto photo editor at Sahapedia, makes sure to commission a photo essay only to a photographer who is native to the region that is to be featured in the essay.
Sahapedia, launched in 2016, is an initiative towards building a compendium of India’s culture and history and in 2018, it launched its photo grant that offers an average Rs. 50,000 to the grantees. So far, it has published 54 photo essays and the initiative is supported by IndusInd Bank. Ghosh, based in Gurgaon, has previously worked with Getty Images and has been working with Sahapedia since its inception.
He reiterates Karat’s opinion and says, “we have also learnt in the process that there is an insider knowledge and there is an outsider knowledge”. He explains that the problem shows itself on various levels — religion, class, gender, and so on — and that is something Western publications don’t understand because their societies are much more homogenous than India and many of the countries in Global South.
Citing the example of Nagaland’s Konyak tribe, which has often been featured in popular media for the tattoos sported by its members, he points out that photographers often focus on recreating what they have seen before rather than doing an actual story. “It’s not just a colonial problem but an Indian problem as well,” he says. “So, when we receive applications, we ask people if they have had any previous engagement with the community [about which they have pitched the story] and a lot of people don’t have any.”
Indian photographers, he says, don’t focus on the reporting which is essential for a good caption. It is a caption that tells us more about the ‘subject’ — age, name, profession, and the story behind the image. The caption, then, is what makes the photo worth its thousand words. “We have to brief photographers on this, we talk to them about how to see the environment around them,” he adds.
Ghosh enlisted Indrajit Khambe, a photographer based in a small town near the Goa-Maharashtra border which was critical in documenting the community of Siddis, which has historical roots and primarily lives along the Konkan region of Maharashtra, Goa, and Karnataka. The community started out as slaves brought from Africa to India by Arab traders but in 16th century, a slave turned mercenary rose to the ranks of a Peshwa in Ahmednagar Sultanate who then managed to harass Marathas, fight off Mughals, and hold back Portuguese and British. Today, however, Siddis are a marginalized community, which is why Ghosh wanted to be careful with their story.
“We didn’t want to exoticize them as their story is already known,” he says. Eventually both he and Khambe zeroed in on the community’s sporting culture. The photo essay, then, not only shows us that particular aspect but does it with familiarity and intimacy to the point that they feel relatable rather than just ‘subjects’. Similarly, with a photo essay about snake charmers, we see a deftness in dealing with tricky topics. “It was a challenge to look at snake charmers in a way that was not colonial,” Ghosh admits.
Done as sponsored content by the Indian Premier League’s Rajasthan Royals cricket team, it manages to turn the Indian snake charmer stereotype on its head and present an insightful narrative. Among other things, it tells us that snake charmers were actually snake catchers who lived as nomads because they were not allowed to live in villages owing to their caste and work. Their job was to catch snakes in the village and release them into the wild and so in doing so, they played the role of conservationists rather than mystical entertainers. In 1972, the Kalbeliya community faced an existential crisis and they had to adapt by performing as dancers and entertainers at events. Some of them even have their own bands that are hired for weddings.
Another photo essay that Ghosh felt challenged by and reflects the difficulties in reporting about India was a story from Manipur. It documented life and work of the community that practices the indigenous Sanamahi religion. He read books to understand the basic philosophy of the religion, which forms the main text of the essay. “We have to be careful to not use terms that are Christian in origin like God, enlightenment, and so on,” explaining how that can dilute a story such as this one.
But if work such as these essays is possible, then why aren’t more Indian publications, especially those in news, doing it? “Indian organizations send photographers only to conflict zones [and] a lot of news organizations don’t have a photo editorial position,” he says. Since it is conflict zone photojournalism that tends to win a Pulitzer or international acclaim, Indian photojournalists tend to mimic Western narratives because there is no other model for them to follow in order to build a career or a living.
At times, that can go wrong as well. Souvid Datta, a British Indian photojournalist and filmmaker, was caught doctoring images as a result of this rat race. When caught, he seemed sorrier that he was caught rather than of the crime itself when he explained doctoring his images saying, “I was also discovering the technology of Photoshop for the first time (as is clear in the result) and the creation of something new excited me. It felt like a very basic artistic achievement”. Before this was discovered, Datta was the toast of the town for a photo-essay about violence in Kolkata’s sex industry.
Both Karat and Ghosh acknowledge how common it can be to see Indian photojournalists and photographers cater to the biases of international publications, organizations in order to win fellowships, grants, and of course, the recognition. Both feel that in order for things to get better, the onus lies on Indian photojournalists, photographers, editors and other stakeholders to present their stories with more depth and investing in their visual narratives.
