PITCHING ON THE TRACK

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Nivedan writes on how to take development photography to a particular target audience in a socially and politically useful way.

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There are many ways to take the photographs of social and political significance to the public. I am certainly not for hanging it in an art gallery. It is nothing but selling poverty and powerlessness for a high price. Even though if the pictures are intended to evoke consciousness in the public, the impact depends upon the time, place, the audience to which it is presented and also the way it is presented.

Art galleries interest the creamy layer as they find something to decorate the walls. They prefer colourful wallpapers or glittering framed wall hangings; they do not care for the implied messages. So when photography on poverty and powerlessness goes to an art gallery, it is nothing but mere art. Whenever we read “Robinson Crusoe”, we romanticize solitude and living with nature, as we usually do with Adivasis. But is there anyone to live like a cast-away? Why not if solitude is blissful and romantic? One puncture in the motorcycle, 10 Km away from a hill station, will make a vacation into an intensive military training; we certainly won’t be romanticizing that. So when it occurs to us, we are not ready to tolerate it. Similarly, the artful photo of poverty certainly does not convey the emotions, the desperate voices and the powerlessness of the subjects. Think of the same from the subject’s point of view. Someone taking my state of despair to decorate a wall is tampering with my dignity and making money out of it. It is totally unethical and uncouth; enough is said. As I have told, the photography magazines are doing the same thing.

So how should I use it in an ethical way? If one wants to reach people through the press, he/she should choose the right newspaper/magazine first. It is better to write photo essays on the own, otherwise, the media may manipulate with stories that are not at all related. Secondly, one has to check for the photo essays. Giving credit to the photographer is also an ethical practice. One need not send the essays or photographs for the media that does not give credits to photographers. Tehelka carries good photo essays. Then one has to trace the ideology of the particular newspaper/magazine. Pro-real estate newspapers that carry out separate sheets for ads for new apartments will not publish something on the problems faced by the construction workers in the construction sites. For example, “The Hindu” covered the issue of farmer’s suicide very well. Photos on this issue may be used very well by them.

If one wants to take the other route, they can contribute their photos to non-profits who are genuinely working to address the issues the photographers who have covered it. It may be useful for the purpose of lobbying or research on the issue. It can also be used to mobilize the people. For example, I have used the photographs to design posters, book covers and documentary film CD covers for NCAS, so that it reaches the right people, who understand or need to understand the issues, like film makers, policy makers, researchers, activists or the people of the affected community. As with writing photo essays, here also, it is better to design the posters as the photographer himself can substantiate with words or slogans in them. So words and visuals will have cohesiveness in a better way. Third parties may distort the picture with their design language with lesser understanding of issues and the target audience.

Some of my designs for NCAS

Another way of doing it is making photo-documentaries that tell stories or issues with a sequence of pictures. They are substantiated with captions and brief comments. They can be made available in the internet. There are numerous commercial photo stocks. There is no difference between the art galleries and these stocks, except the fact that photo stocks supply photos to the corporate world. It is even worse. There is one stock called ‘Photoshare’ that supplies photos for non-profit use only. They don’t charge the non-profits for the photos and they insist on the ethics of photography. One has to request for a particular photo by a particular photographer. They would ask for the purpose and on agreeing to certain terms and conditions they send high resolution photos and the user has to ensure that proper credits are given to the photographer. The copyrights are reserved only with the photographer and he/she can use it anywhere.

Click here to visit www.photoshare.org

So there are innumerable ways to make photographs useful socially and politically. One has to find out the right way to reach to the particular target group. There are ways, all that is required is will.

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About the Author: Nivedan is an intern at National Centre for Advocacy Studies (NCAS), Pune. With self-nurtured knowledge of photography, he experiments with photography and other forms like posters so as to use them as tools for sensitization, advocacy and social transformation.

Contact Nivedan at nivedanmangalesh@yahoo.com

SLAVES OF THE CUBICLES

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Nivedan writes on the role of photography magazines in supplying photographers for the mainstream genres, especially fashion photography. He also writes about Mr. John Isaac, who was able to break this paradox of mainstream, yet winning the recognition he deserves.

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Any creation should have a purpose behind it, according to me. I am not for ‘art for art’s sake’. Taking photographs to showcase that I’m a photographer will get me recognition. But, to break the cubicle named ‘mainstream’ we are captivated in, social usefulness by reaching to the people and influencing them through the photograph is really important. This cubicle has kept everyone, including the doctors, advocates, teachers, photographers, journalists, engineers and all others, for serving the creamy layer of the society named urban middle and upper classes, while a sizeable majority of the rural and urban poor suffer with the denial of access to these cubicles.

There are vast resources for the photographers in these cubicles. If one reads the photography magazines these days, he/she can easily understand that they are in full swing to reinforce these cubicles. If one reads without seeing the cover, the content may confuse the reader if it is a magazine on lifestyle or fashion. Yes, these magazines publish interviews of mainly the fashion photographers, at times about the photographers of other commercial genres. These interviews take around 20% of the space; 20% of the space is for the advertisements; 15% of the space is for the reviews of new products (as I have stressed earlier, gadgets are not more important than the human for photography); 5% of space is for studio lighting and post processing techniques; 10% of space is for announcement of new products and competitions; 15% of space is for useless questions and useless answers. Most of those who ask questions, introduce himself/herself as an aspirant to become a fashion photographer! Their questions will only be on the gadgets (Without knowing their one requirement, I don’t know what photography they would do). 15% is for the pictures from the readers and a few critiques on the technicalities of the photograph (Damn! who needs perspectives or ethics?). It is the same with any magazine.

Very rarely, they glorify the late photographers of the past, who had contributed extra-ordinarily for the society with photographs. Last month, ironically, I found an interview of Mr. John Isaac. He is an ex-UN photographer. He had been to different countries and documented the cultures, colours and sorrows of the different communities. His perspectives were really impressive. He had said that he places humans before photography. He said if a human being is suffering, he would help the human first rather than taking photographs. I liked this particular statement. In these days, there are umpteen photographers capturing the poverty artfully to sell them for a high price in the galleries; some photojournalists, in this process of capturing “Sensational”, damage the dignity of the subjects in a few seconds. In this era, Mr. Isaac has denied a Pulitzer prize to protect the dignity of his subjects! The magazine publishing his interview is a greater surprise.

I am happy that it has happened at least once. It would be great if interviews of such humane photographers get published every month. It gives energy to us that there are photographers who have broken these cubicles, yet getting the recognition they deserve. Highlighting these photographers and their works continuously can trigger a chain reaction to break all these cubicles. For example, if a group of photographers get inspired and concentrate on rural health issues and the holes in the horrible health care system in India and take it to the government-run medical college students and policy makers, the doctors of the futures can be inspired to break the cubicles and the policy makers would be forced to plug the holes in the system respectively. Similarly, if every cubicle is broken, on the long run, sustainable and equitable development is possible. If the mainstream media takes up this role, transparent and accountable governance can be achieved in the far future.

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About the Author: Nivedan is an intern at National Centre for Advocacy Studies (NCAS), Pune. With self-nurtured knowledge of photography, he experiments with photography and other forms like posters so as to use them as tools for sensitization, advocacy and social transformation.
Contact Nivedan at nivedanmangalesh@yahoo.com

ON CASTING LIGHT OVER THE DARK

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Nivedan shares some perspectives on investigative journalism and writes on the importance of maintaining contacts with the activists who work with the people who are exploited, with reference to his rare visit to a quarry.

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Very rarely does one get chances for capturing an exploitative situation. The exploiters never permit outsiders, especially photographers, documentary film makers or the media. There are investigative journalists who do muckraking in such situations. I met one Ms, Madhumita Dutta in Orissa. She was from The Other Media, Madras branch. We were there in the inauguration of an agitation.

The POSCO SEZ was coming up in the Jagatsinghpur district. So the activists and the people to be displaced were raising slogans in front of the collector’s office. Finally they stormed into it. However, the collector had left earlier. The protest ended up in giving the demands to the Assistant Collector. However the agitation continued in the villages. The villagers had put up check posts of their own to prohibit the outsiders, especially POSCO and government officials from entering the village. The situation was tense, as they had already kept a few Korean nationals working for POSCO as hostages. The government from its side had engaged the armed police force in the area to keep watch over the area. Going into the villages would be dangerous, as neither the guards nor the villagers would recognize the intruders. So we decided not to go that night to the villages.

But Madhu spoke to an activist who goes to the village regularly and got on to the vehicle and without any hesitation she entered the village that night. Then she collected stories and took photos also. She came back in the morning to inform us that the tension had reduced as the hostages were released. We went there to find out that it was a very tricky situation. There were more than five hundred pairs of suspicious eyes watching us and we were let in only when they were able to confirm that we were not foes. I wonder at the investigative journalists and their courage. More than that, their ability to get news and photos at such situations is amazing.

I got a lifetime opportunity of taking pictures in a quarry. We went to an organization by name Santulan. They were working with quarry workers. They conduct a school for the quarry children. After interacting with the children, we went to the quarry to see the environment in which they were working. The vision was obstructed by the dust there. We went closer to find a giant crater that was made by quarrying. There were hundreds of people working in inhuman working conditions. Some of them were breaking stones ten hours a day! Some had to cut the stones from above so that it can be collected 150 feet below. They were in the edges without any safety helmets or gloves or safety ropes. There was moving gravel under their feet. One slip would bring a sad end to their life.

They were bonded labourers who have been working for generations. They had been given accommodation in houses built with stones. One may be carried away by the thought that stone houses means something like the buildings of Ferguson College or that of Madurai Medical College. But imagine igloos that are made of stone. The houses are like that. The roof was made of tin. It was literally a den without ventilation. Air does not come in, but rain water certainly does. One has to crawl in and ovoid getting up, because it will crash open the roof. I went in to take a few pictures. There are no words to describe it. One can just look at the pictures and find out. It is fortunate that I am able to bring out this injustice to the attention of a broader audience.

Quarry

But I got it clear both from Madhu and my own experience that one has to establish contact with the activists who are fighting with the people who face injustice. It is the best way to capture injustice without facing some serious risk as the activists have access to them. One has to go casually as a visitor who came for a field visit through that organization and get the pictures in due course of the visit. Presenting oneself as a person who came to collect stories and photographs will rise suspicion ultimately making it fruitless. People's trust on us is more important than anything else while going for the shoot.

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About the Author: Nivedan is an intern at National Centre for Advocacy Studies (NCAS), Pune. With self-nurtured knowledge of photography, he experiments with photography and other forms like posters so as to use them as tools for sensitization, advocacy and social transformation.

Contact Nivedan at nivedanmangalesh@yahoo.com

On Gloss and Clichés

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Nivedan writes on the Clichés and the gloss that one comes across in photography these days and points out how one should avoid them in development photography.

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Familiarity breeds contempt. It is true and applicable to photography. Conventional angles, conventional subjects/objects, conventional time and conventional parameters make clichéd shots. That is what most of us do. People in sunrise and sunsets in the beaches and Toothy smiles in front of Taj Mahal or other heritage sites are a few examples of clichéd shots. One can find innumerable photos looking similar in the image-sharing sites. Maybe they feel themselves to be documenting their own life: a literal understanding of ‘making history’.

Even in the family albums one can observe the bright colours and clichéd shots. It implies that we like to preserve only the gloss of the history in a very stereotypical way. We never like to preserve the bad memories. Leaving the family histories aside, the history album of a city, a community, a marginalized section of the society is never full of colours of joy and celebration. It is always drenched red with wars, disputes, disasters and sorrows. So, willing suspension of artful gloss and clichés is required while taking the pictures of the people who have never seen the gloss of life.

This is why classic black and white pictures (Again, for example, that of Raghu Rai) touch the hearts and convey more than the glossy artful portrayal. The very form itself conveys both happiness and sorrow just through white and black respectively. Can anyone imagine the black comedies of Charlie Chaplin in colour? Don’t even think of it.

Natural light only can work wonders for this type of photography. Uniform lighting spoils the sense of the picture, the mood and the emotion prevailing in that situation. Even if the pictures are taken in colour, the tungsten lighting would be the best choice to convey everything. I would never use any form of artificial lighting in a photograph, including the built-in flash of the camera. Even if a few portions of the environment is covered with shadow, it conveys a meaning, say something forbidden, something that would affect the dignity of the person photographed (Say, while capturing manual scavenging). The latter was used in the Elizabethan Theatre. ‘Horror or something shocking (say a murder or war) should not be shown on the stage’, was an ethic in it. The Indian Express, during the time of emergency, left the censored spaces blank to let the readers interpret that there was a column that was written against the government forbidden for the print. Similarly, shadows in the absence of artificial lighting convey strong messages.

So when it comes to development photography, one has to avoid the gloss and clichés and put the expression of sense and emotion in the photos first. It is better to capture in black and white. But it comes only with practice and experimentation. For example, I need to increase the exposure compensation by two stops to balance the highlights and shadows in my cameras. Otherwise it is too dark. If one chooses colour, he/she should try to avoid too much of fanciful and artful portrayal, going for natural lighting.

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About the Author: Nivedan is an intern at National Centre for Advocacy Studies (NCAS), Pune. With self-nurtured knowledge of photography, he experiments with photography and other forms like posters so as to use them as tools for sensitization, advocacy and social transformation.
Contact Nivedan at nivedanmangalesh@yahoo.com

WHEN, WHY AND WHAT NEXT?

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Nivedan shares his view on when and why, a photographer can upgrade his/her gadgets.

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“Last year I bought a camera. I ditched it this year for the sake of a new model”. This is a typical statement that one can expect from a young urban photography enthusiast. But there may be a lot of reasons behind it. A probable few are “I have money, the trend says it’s old. So I am buying a new, trendy, sleek, flashy, fully loaded, state of the art, top of the range-megapixel camera”; “I am fed up with that one as it is too familiar”. But these ideas are simply utilitarian and reflect the devaluation of photography as a whole. What is the necessity to change the camera, when the previous camera is just fine? Is it totally useless?

Any camera in this world is useful, even if it is jammed! Yes, as I always stress, photography is in the brain and not in the camera. My friend had a jammed Minolta XD5 of the 70’s. He had kept it as it had problems with the focal plane shutter, film winding lever and of course the most common problem, the fungus inside on the lens elements. He had brought with the hope that he may be able to use it. But he didn’t even know how to open the film compartment. He threw it on the attic and looked out for a new digital camera.

I had constantly been saying to him to repair it. It is a classic and will certainly be one of the best tools to learn photography. He was not ready to do that as he wanted to be with the trend. But the camera was really useful to me in practicing composition, manual focusing and of course, handling an SLR. SLRs’ focusing screens are totally different from that of the digital camera that shows bright images on the big LCDs. SLRs and DSLRs don’t have the liveview (though the newly introduced ones do have. But they come with price). One has to look through the viewfinder, which is not as bright or large as the LCDs. Secondly, it is difficult to focus manually. So practice helped to prepare myself for the next upgrade.

I had to practice composition, exposure and other technical aspects of photography with my compact camera rigorously to gain perfection. In the first 5 months I took 3000 pictures (I bought the camera in February 2007). But now I have taken around 8500 photos overall. The numbers reduced gradually. It does not mean that I have lost interest in photography. It is an indicator of acquiring perfection. During the first 5 months I used to take pictures whenever I felt like, with different parameters like white balance, ISO, exposure and composition. There was a constant experimentation. But later I learnt to compose the frame in mind, guess the right parameters and more importantly to choose the right moment to capture. These days I do not take more than two pictures of the same thing. I find it the right time to upgrade my camera.

So what are the reasons to upgrade my camera? Is it that I being an ‘expert’ can change cameras as I wish? The answer is no one in this world is an expert as there are more than a thousand ways to capture a moment. So there is not one way called ‘expert’s way’, everyone is experimenting and no one can claim that he/she is ‘the best’ or ‘expert’; everyone is a student in photography in reality, if not in claims or the labels. I am also a learner, and I don’t upgrade for the sake of the trend or being fed up with my camera. When I reach the saturation point in using my camera, i.e. when I reach the point when I become capable of creating something more than what my camera can capture, I will upgrade my camera.

For example, the dynamic range of my camera is lesser than that of a SLR and details are washed off when I click against a bright light source. Reducing the aperture does not help as the minimum aperture is f/7.6 in which the image is unusable due to the chromatic aberration. I am not able to capture fast moving objects because of the focusing speed of my camera and also the focusing ability. So there is a clear gap between what I want to do and what the camera is capable of. So at this point of time I will go for a DSLR.

But I would do a detailed research of the gadgets available. Only as per my needs I will choose my next camera. More importantly, I won’t ditch my compact camera, as it also serves my purpose even now. For example, if I am doing candid photography in place where child labour is practiced, the owner of the place is certainly not gonna like it. Usually in such situations either the camera is seized or destroyed. It happened in a construction site, where the HR manager tried to erase whatever footages we had shot for the documentary on the construction workers in Pune. It happens in protests and agitations also. So in such situations, using a compact camera won’t draw much of attention. Even if it is seized or broken it does not take a heavy toll on my wallet. So, compact cameras also play an equally important role in development photography.

So when it comes to upgrading the gadget one has to think of what he/she has achieved with the current equipment, what he/she can still do with the current equipment, what the limitations of the current equipment are, what the budget for the next camera is, whether the next gadget would satisfy his/her needs, etc. Finally, before getting a new camera, I would advice to do some research on what one can get.

Useful Link:
Check out http://www.dpreview.com/ for detailed reviews and latest releases. It is a bit too technical and the reviewers go into too much of details that may not be necessary for beginners. But it is quite informative.

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About the Author: Nivedan is an intern at National Centre for Advocacy Studies (NCAS), Pune. With self-nurtured knowledge of photography, he experiments with photography and other forms like posters so as to use them as tools for sensitization, advocacy and social transformation.

Contact Nivedan at nivedanmangalesh@yahoo.com