1. What is your earliest memory of how or what attracted you to photography?
My father had a Konica point-and-shoot, which was the only camera in the entire family. It was used only when there were family get-togethers or if we went on a holiday. I was never allowed to use the camera for a long while.
During one of those school holidays I quietly took the camera out of the cupboard and started shooting everything in the house. Just that there was no film in the camera. I would look through the viewfinder and carefully aim at everything and click. It was such a pleasure every time I clicked. Slowly, I started to construct my own world with the spaces and characters I conjured up by looking through the viewfinder. It would be a very long time before I was able to actually shoot with film inside the camera, and even longer to begin using photography to express myself.
I believe I am still doing something similar, constructing a certain world that isn’t easily visible to the naked eye, but is quite clear inside.
2. How did your shift from engineering to photography happen?
I am still surprised at how I managed to gather the courage to abandon a fairly safe journey to begin something all over again from scratch. It happened quite gradually. All through the seven years that I spent studying engineering, I managed to spend a lot of time making photographs. I had a camera and also the film this time. I was making as many (embarrassing) photos as possible for flickr and other platforms. The fact that I was not a ‘photographer’ made it easy for me to navigate that inevitable path that most of us want to forget later.
And then came the time when I wanted to be called a ‘photographer.’ It sounded nice, and I had very little idea of what it actually meant. Then I spent many years traveling. But I should mention that I was in a privileged position where my family is concerned, even though they were unhappy, they didn’t expect me to give them money or repay their loans. This is something many in India wouldn’t have, and there is very limited institutional support. But then, one has to do it in whatever way possible, to find ways to support oneself financially. It was a very, very slow, intense, and long journey for me. Each one will have it differently.
3. Tell us about your experience studying photojournalism at the University of Westminster, London. How has it influenced and informed your practice?
After I decided to move away from engineering, I had no community of photographers to engage with. Study was the only way I could convince my parents that what I was doing was something serious and, of course, to convince myself to abandon engineering.
Studying there introduced me to a world beyond street photography and aesthetics. It was a good beginning to get to know all of the possibilities that exist within the medium. However, since it was a specific course on photojournalism, we were mostly taught to shoot stories for magazines, with just a mild introduction to history and ethics. We were given the space to think that photojournalists could be a possible cure to the many ailments in this world. It took me a year to realize I couldn’t even cure my own ailments, let alone the ailments of others – and that, too, with photography. This had nothing to do specifically with the school, but the way photojournalism was seen back then. Maybe even now, some photographers believe they could be that catalyst for change, but I feel I first should try to be more responsible for myself before claiming responsibility over others in this ever-changing landscape of representation.
4. In your opinion, is it important to have formal training in photography?
I would not be able to answer this question with surety. There are days when I feel the formal training has boxed me and messed up with my instincts, and there are days when I feel it provided a small surface to stand upon to begin my journey. It is a bit of both, and I feel it is important to recognize that and unlearn everything that restricts us, in order to find our own truthful position in this shifting world.
Many of the finest photographers we know have no formal training. The best writers all over the world don’t have any formal education in writing. Schools can possibly be a good place to form an intimate community with whom one can be honest and not fear being vulnerable.
5. If you were to design a photo program for young Indian photographers, what would it look like?
In my opinion, I would want to make it into a two-year program, with a good collection of 8-to-10-week workshops and parallel mentorships sequenced like edit of images where one leads to the other quite organically. I believe that through photography one potentially can touch the depths that great literature does. To be able to go deeper, one needs extensive literary reading and life experiences. I would want every Indian photographer / artist to be introduced to early Indian literature of all kinds: epics, poetry, oral tales, and myths, as well as sculpture, architecture, and paintings spread across all the regions and religions. Alongside that should be readings of history and how it plays in the politics of today. There should be courses involving extensive interaction with nature (forests / mountains / rivers) not only to photograph, but to just interact – to place our bodies alongside the bodies of nature. At the end of the two-year period, everyone should have walked at least 2000 kilometers across the country. Overall, there should be the space to wonder, to slow down, to contemplate not just with the intellect, but with our entire complex being.
6. Who or what has inspired you to pursue photography and/or continues to do so?
Every inspiration I have gotten so far comes from varied life experiences. I travel quite extensively. Apart from travel, I would just say reading, reading, and reading has been a great driving force. There is so much that is to be read from over many thousands of years ago, and there is so much to be read from today – it is a never-ending list. I guess what I am looking for is an experience that is whole and above the individual that I am.
7. Is there a book, exhibition, or body of work that has really impressed you and maybe influenced your work / life?
Being in Chennai one doesn’t get to see many exhibitions. With respect to books, I will write the first few that come to my mind right now. Moksha by Fazal Sheik, The Sweet Flypaper of Life by Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes, Look it’s Getting Sunny Outside!!! by Sohrab Hura, House of Love by Dayanita Singh.
8. What draws / drew you to the subject matter you are pursuing in your current work? Does it come as a gut feeling, or after analysis or research, as memory, or something that bothers you?
I trust the gut feeling more than analysis or research, which comes later to bolster the work. The work I am making right now comes from a strong memory, an image of that memory. It begins with that first moment I engaged with the river Kaveri at my grandparents’ village. It begins with remembering that forgotten image. I went back to the river again about two decades later and slowly started re-engaging with the river, at a time when the river doesn’t flow most of the year. When there was no river to speak of, how was one to reckon with the absence? This work, I feel, is an unhurried investigation of memory and place.
9. Do your projects typically run in parallel, or do you focus on one project at a time?
I always have many parallel works running. All of my works are made to sit for a long time, allowing time for growth. In that time while it brews, I become restless and start digging into other ideas. There would be no knowing when a new work begins, but unnoticeably I keep watering the different seeds lying inside. Quietly, some of them start growing and a few months or years later I realize I have something new emerging.
It sometimes feels like I have been very unproductive, as many lie around unformed, but one could never say that to a tree when it is not the season to bear fruits. We have to wait for our season to bloom. I have come to realize that these parallel works (even the ones that have not taken any shape) constantly feed each other at different stages, challenging themselves and making one another stronger. I don’t think we ever take breaks as we are collecting or discarding something or the other all the time, mentally or physically.
10. Digital technology has changed photography drastically over the last few years.
I was quite young when the digital medium came, and it was easy for me to transition. But I have been working with both digital and analog since then. Currently, I am shooting with both digital and film for a single body of work. I have no attachments in this respect and what matters to me more is what one does with photographs.
11. Do you ever find yourself creatively ‘stuck?’ Is there something that is particularly helpful to you in overcoming this?
Yes, of course, a lot. This is when I go to music (of course I listen to music even otherwise). I believe that music can touch and awaken a part of us that no other medium can. Even to handle these hard times we are going through we need music to keep us going, and poetry, too.
12. How do you measure success or that a body of work is going well? Do you share it with colleagues or others? Your own sense of it?
Yes, I share my work with a select few people I trust. I trust them for their sensitivity. I share the work with them only after I have produced a good amount of material. Sometimes the work takes a complete turn, and sometimes it is given a pause for a while to contemplate before I get back to it.
Also, I am usually careful not to share even a single image (on social media or any other platforms) from any body of work that has progressed only partially. I believe it affects the flow of the work and reduces the growing intensity by drawing unnecessary attention.
13. How much effort do you put into getting your work shown? Is this important to you? Does showing your work feed your creative process, or does it distract you from it?
I am not so good at taking a lot of effort in getting my work shown. But I do believe it is important the work we make gets shown, as that is when it starts to grow outside of the artist. It starts to have its own life, which I believe is important for the creator and the creation. The nature of a river is to reach the sea / ocean. Likewise, the work we create has to reach an audience for it to have a life. Even if the work isn’t received well, we have to keep making work, thinking there will be someone waiting somewhere to experience it.
14. Do you feel that there are adequate opportunities and avenues to share / show your work in your home country, or do you always look for such opportunities abroad?
At the moment, apart from the photo festivals around South East Asia there are very few good spaces to see / show photographic work in an extensive way in India. We all look for opportunities abroad, as there are several established traditions within photography and there is a lot more dialogue on photography. But the problem there would be the translation of the context to an audience who does not have the understanding of our history and culture.
In recent years there is a lot more critical thinking, writing and reading on photography in India, which I believe is slowly creating many new platforms for showing photography in different spaces. Photography is now being taken to the audience to their own spaces, to public spaces, which I believe liberates the medium from gallery spaces and reaches a wider audience. Having our country and its context in mind helps to create our own method in sharing the work with the audience. Everything is in its nascent stage in India and we will have to work together as a community in nurturing some of these new platforms.
15. We know that fine art or documentary photography is not always enough to make a living. Some do commercial work, others teach. Are there other photography related areas that you work with in order to supplement your living? Some that you would recommend aspiring photographers to consider?
I mostly never say no to any kind of work that comes my way. However, I am careful to never take up a lot of commercial work that comes in the way of my personal practice.
I have been collaborating with a few people in making videos and editing small films for different companies / organizations. I always collaborate with different people so I can share the load of the work, and there would also be more than one way to get new assignments.
16. 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?
I have had such an experience while I was showing one of my works on the cinema and politics of Tamil Nadu for a show in Europe. I had initially made the work having only the Tamil population in mind. For the show I had to re-edit and translate the work for the western audience, which made the work quite different from its original. But then I realized even for someone from a different part of India I had to translate the context entirely for them. Even though I made some major changes in that work to bring about some universality, there are still so many layers that are better understood by the Tamil audience. I think this is bound to happen with some works that are very regional in nature. If the work demands, we shouldn’t shy away from making it regional, and I feel it is fine if some works don’t get shown widely outside.
17. 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?
Many people told me many great things, but I just didn’t listen. I think we will have to figure it out in our own way through our own struggle. But wonderful people and the interactions with them come a long way to keep us focused on the path.
18. How would an interested collector go about buying your work?
They just have to get in touch with me directly by eMail: 5pointsix@gmail.com
19. If you didn’t do photography, what other career might you have pursued?
I would have remained an engineer that I was. I would have had my own car, my own house and what not.
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Copyright © Karthik Subramanian
20 November
