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