1. What is your earliest memory of how or what attracted you to photography?
I grew up all alone in the ’60s and ’70s, with no one around me, barring my sister. This was because I was born and brought up at St. Stephen’s College, on the University of Delhi campus, as my father was a professor. There were only four families living there at that time and all had grown-up kids. There was no one I could play around with. There were only professors and university students who were much older to me. As a result, my refuge became the library. The college library was absolutely fabulous. My afternoons were spent just flipping through books and magazines. The amount of visual material that I flipped through was amazing – encyclopedias, National Geographics, Brittannicas. Today’s generation doesn’t even know what the Britannica is. There was a certain physicality to everything in those days. It was such a big deal to have access to these books back then. And this actually opened up the world to me. I found answers to so many of my questions. That’s when I realized that photography is one medium which is all about exploration. The visuals that I was seeing were all very thought provoking. The pages of those books are embedded in my mind because of those visual images. Each visual was a revelation. We lived at the university campus till I was 34 years old. And I spent a good part of my life reading those books in the library. I didn’t miss playing cricket and other stuff that one does growing up. And it’s actually because of having spent so much time alone with the books that today I can work alone. I have thousands of friends that I can fall back on, however, I can spend days and months working all by myself. I am quite anti-social that way, but that’s because I don’t have time to waste. There are so many ideas to work on and so little time.
I could not afford to buy books, and then once I had money, I started buying them from kabadi bazaars (flea markets). I would buy them in bulk and then get them bound. In today’s generation there is no physicality involved as they find everything on Google. And there is hardly any retention. Jumping from one Google page to another, the attention span is so short. And the experience of having to look for a particular book, to go through the index system of finding what you want to read, just doesn’t exist with today’s generation. There is no inquisitiveness. The whole idea of becoming a photographer for them is, to a great extent, about becoming famous and making good money. What they don’t understand is that photography is a lifestyle; it’s about a certain way of living; it’s not about an agenda. Yes, it’s important to be able to earn money. But it is also important to have a certain balance and not give up. It’s about constantly learning and working on projects; it’s about exploring, observing and documenting life in all its forms. If you don’t have that quest and fire in you, and if you just want to do assignments to make money, then there is no difference between you and the guy who runs a Xerox machine on the road side.
2. After completing your graduation in history from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, how and why did you get into photography?
Photography is the only profession in the world that gives you an opportunity to spend time with a beggar and a president on the same day! Photography invites you to explore and travel the world and create what you want, and pays you in the process, as well. This made me want to become a photographer.
3. You are self-taught as a photographer. How did you inform yourself of the medium – the techniques, the language, and the aesthetics of it?
I am inquisitive by nature and want to understand how things work. I informed myself, experimented and learned the techniques on the job. There is no other way. Somebody can teach you the alphabet, but the formation of words and sentences and the expression has to come from you. ISO, shutter, and aperture can be explained. However, how you combine them and use them in a given situation to create a great image has to come from you; the vocabulary has to be formed by you.
I just flow. I don’t have an agenda as to how much I want to make. I believe in just doing things. People have plans, many plans; I have only one plan, which is – just do it. If you have an idea, just go for it. The worst thing that can happen is that you can go wrong. However, you can start all over again. But if you don’t act on your idea and just sit back, procrastinate, and keep saying that yeah, one day I will do it, then honestly speaking, that day never really comes. You have to strive for one thing, which is to constantly implement your thoughts and ideas. Life is too short to wait for that one day to come. It’s about taking risks in life. I started with nothing. I still have that Ziess Nikon the my father gave to me when I was around 16 years old. That was the only one thing that I had. You can’t keep saying that the day I get a particular camera, I will start making images. No. Photography is all about innovation. The operative word for photography is jugaar. That is how photographers actually work. If you see how photography started, from camera obscura to the pinhole, they all just kept trying to figure out how to make it better. One thing led to another. Now that is the life of a photographer. To constantly innovate. The whole problem with the present generation is that they want ready-made solutions; the operative word for the present generation is cheat sheet. They want everything in an instant – like instant coffee. But life was never instant. It was never about instant gratification. It was about a slow evolution of ideas and thoughts. And that’s how I still work even today. If I have an idea, then I will figure it out and do it.
4. Do you think it is important to receive formal training in photography?
No.
5. If you were to design a photo program for young Indian photographer, what would it look like? Degree courses? Workshops? Mentorships?
I would go the workshop and mentorship way and teach people the art of seeing. I would teach the basic technicalities first and then teach how to combine the various elements to develop their own aesthetics and style. Each genre has a specific style. I have been predominantly an industrial advertising and interior / architectural photographer for most of my career and it is alarming that today there are hardly any photographers doing industrial photography. It seems as if this genre of photography doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t understand why. There is a huge demand, with industries growing and always requiring something or the other to be photographed, and they pay well. But it seems that in this generation, nobody is looking at this genre. Since it is such a specialized field of photography, I think this generation is just not capable and interested in investing themselves the way we did in our time. They only want to be wedding or fashion photographers.
6. Who or what has inspired you to pursue photography and/or continues to do so?
Seeing the works of Josef Koudelka and Mary Ellen Mark and the lives they have led as photographers has greatly inspired me. One of the first books that I bought from a kabadi wala (scrap dealer) was that of Mary Ellen Mark. She wrote about how difficult and lonely it is to be a photographer; how you are always on the road and waking up in different hotel rooms. The fact that a photographer, after being thrown into a situation, has to come up with good images, is what inspired me. Photographers are thrown into battlefields, industrial situations and have to come up with a solution. A good photojournalist, on walking into a situation, will quickly assess it, be in complete control, and find the right spot to photograph from. And the possibility of going to new places – I just jumped at it always. Today, the negotiations start with money. Yes, money is important. But our negotiations never started with money. They always started with the scope of work. And we took it up because the work was interesting and would end up being a part of our portfolio. It was about the opportunity.
7. In the beginning of your career you spent time in Mumbai making film stills. Please talk about this phase of your professional career. Why did you shift back to Delhi and not continue in Mumbai?
Going to Mumbai was actually a spur of the moment decision. And it so happened that I got a call from my friend, Ravi Vaswani, who was a part of the epic film Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. He asked me to come down to do the stills of the film, saying that I would hardly get paid but we’ll have a good time being around each other. I just jumped at that offer and left for Mumbai to live with my friends. I stayed there for a couple of years, but actually hated being in Mumbai. I grew up at Delhi University, where we had a bungalow with lawns and gardens all around and the Aravalli Ridge at one end. Mumbai suffocated me with its so-very-small flats. And everybody in Mumbai was there to make money – something I was never interested in. So, I came back to Delhi. However, I learned something fantastic in the film industry – as photographers, we are always working towards lighting a situation for a still image. And in the film industry I learned how to do lighting for a moving image. As an observer on the sets, one can learn so much about lighting skills that you just can’t learn otherwise. It was a great learning experience for me. And that is what being a photographer is – you are a lifetime student. And if you are not willing to be one, then you are in the wrong profession. As a photographer, you are constantly on a learning curve. Look at our journey – from using analog to now using high-end digital equipment, learning various software; it’s been a huge journey. We have constantly evolved. In 2004, we dived into the new digital situation, which itself was evolving – Photoshop, Lightroom – everything was evolving, and we kept up with the pace and evolved as well. Photography is essentially about constant evolution, reading and learning all along the way. Nothing about it is static. There is so much craft involved in photography, and good photographers are ultimately great craftsmen. Look at Ansel Adams.
8. Digital technology has changed photography drastically over the last few years. Did you initially embrace the changes or resist them? Do you believe the changes have been good for the medium or not?
Change is always good and photography is about endless change. It’s the only art form in the world that is constantly evolving. Which art form has evolved as much as photography? Photography constantly engages you at every level. There is a certain physicality, which was more in the analog than there is with the digital. However, the engagement is still there. But how does a photographer react to this endless chase of digital technology? They are, in reality, being forced by technology to change. Today it’s 18 mega pixel, the next year its 24. The biggest issue is that, even before you can master what you have, new technology is thrown in your face, which is all dictated by the companies that actually are pushing you in various directions. Instead of mastering technology, photographers are just running after it in an endless chase, which is meaningless. Change is good but it has to be meaningful.
9. Do you ever find yourself creatively ‘stuck?’ Is there something that is particularly helpful to you in overcoming this?
No, not really. Photography is a challenge about problem solving. And this is what I love about being a photographer. Each assignment is like a problem being thrown at you, where you have to figure out a solution. And in the analog days, there was no Photoshop. You had to get that one shot right – the composition, the lighting, and the frame. Everything. At times doing multiple layered exposures in one frame to get the lighting right in each corner. It was great to deal with all these creative challenges.
10. Do you think there is a universal language that photography uses? Do you think that South Asian photographers are finding that they are judged by western criteria and standards?
The problem is that we have never had our own visual language. Where does our visual language come from? It comes from our traditional paintings, miniatures and various schools. Most of our painters went to the West and came back to practice. Now, very few have their grounding in Shanti Niketan. But the Western influence has always played a major role in the way we look at things. This whole idea of very static staged documentary work accompanied by a huge text is totally western. This is the irony – a medium that was created to bypass those thousand words is now being used and being justified by writing two thousand words about it. Photography, which was supposed to be the simplest form of expression, has now been complicated by the jargon and the language used by curators. They are making it so difficult to understand by the usage of such complicated words and language. And photography used to be the simplest form of expression. The minute it is explained in words, it becomes a very complicated expression. What I find unacceptable is when people, without having any practical experience of making images, dwell upon writing about it. According to me, people who have no idea of image-making have no business writing about it. And some photographers, too, take the route of writing. Photography is a language on its own. Where is the need to write huge interpretative statements on it? It seems that they are justifying their images by unnecessary analyzing, over analyzing, and philosophizing them. Writers / curators and photographers have this symbiotic relationship with each other, where they seem to be living off of each other.
So, to answer your question, western criteria are hugely influencing. We don’t have a language of our own. For instance, if you look at Prabuddha Dasgupta’s work, it was totally influenced by his exposure in France. And this is because one caters to a certain kind of market. And there is no gallerist in India who is talking about the Indian visual language.
11. What got you interested in the subject and practice of photographic conservation? Please tell us about Kulwant Roy’s archive and how you happened to acquire it.
My maternal great grand uncles used to run the first photojournalistic studio in India, in Lahore, in the 1920s and ’30s. Kulwant Roy learnt photography from them. After partition, he moved to Delhi and lived near to where we lived, at Delhi University. Being a family friend, he visited us once a week for dinner for years. He had lost his parents when he was quite young, had siblings with whom he didn’t get along, and remained a bachelor. I slowly got to know him quite well, and in the ’60s, after I finished school, I even worked in his darkroom and was paid Rs 20 per day, which was quite a lot in those days. In the late ’70s, he was diagnosed with blood cancer, and he passed away in 1984. Since he didn’t have any family and was quite close to me, and knowing that I had already started my own photographic practice, he left these trunks with me, saying that they contained some historical moments of our country. I only opened the trunks in 2008, some twenty-four years later. By then, 30-40 percent of the archive was lost – the negatives had crumpled to powder, some had fungus to an extent that couldn’t be removed. That’s when I realized the vulnerability of the physicality of the negatives. I took 6-7 months off to go through his entire archive and learn what could be salvaged. I researched and discovered that our country has no depository or archive. And understood the importance of preserving what had been handed over to me by Kulwant Roy. The next 2-3 years were spent sorting his archive and salvaging this work. That’s how I got into the practice of conserving negatives. Photographers are actually visual documentarians of their times. It is imperative that we pick up material, retrieve it, and save it for posterity, because this visual documentation, especially of the earlier times, are subaltern, unbiased histories. Photographers of that time saw and they shot. There was no Photoshop and no manipulation.
12. When did you start collecting cameras and what prompted you to do so? How did this collection grow into Museo Camera?
This interest started while I was still in college, reason being that one of my biggest entertainments was going to the Sunday bazaar flea market at the Red Fort. Going there was always an eye opener. The stuff available was unbelievable. The music records were mind blowing. The cameras were great. Occasionally, I would pick up one. And that led to my introduction to the kabadis (crap dealers) of the world. Today, the kabadis know me globally. From France, England, people who are picking up junk call to tell me what they have; asking me if I’d like to buy stuff. I have put my lifetime’s money into buying all this. This has interested me from the beginning so that’s what I have done. This profession made me and this is my way of giving back to photography. I worked 18 hours a day and did very well for myself. And the last 2 years, I have not done a lot of work to make money. I raised some funds through crowd funding and we hope to raise more. I have been living off of my savings and investments, while I have been busy making the Museo Camera. And this is my way of giving back to the profession. Five years back, there were two ways that I could go: I could have sold everything off and gone to the hills, or I could create a legacy and seal it in a way, and let it grow into something big. I chose to do the latter.
13. With your years of experience, of the lessons you have learned, what is the one thing you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?
I once overheard somebody say to his son, while I was still in college, “Hey, you’d better study well and become something in life, otherwise you will end up becoming a photographer like him.” I am so glad that I heard that, because it reinforced my idea that I am going to do what I want to do. And my parents pushed me to do what I believed in and what was my passion. So, I really don’t have anything to lament about. And there was another incident when this guy, who was a management head of a big industrial house, reached out to my parents and said that he was concerned that I was serious about pursuing photography as a profession. He advised me that it’s great to pursue photography as a hobby, however I should take up something else as a career. Ten years later, he called me home and asked me to teach photography to his son. I just smiled. So, here was this man who tried to destroy my chosen path and now wanted me to guide his son! Life comes full circle.
14. If you didn’t do photography, what other career might you have pursued?
I already have quite a few parallel careers; farming being one of them, which is actually a lot like analog photography. A good farmer does many crops at the same time. Similarly, a good photographer will work on many ideas and different genres at the same time. I would also love to run a resort in the wilderness.
[This interview was conducted prior to the global pandemic.]
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Copyright © Aditya Arya
20 November
