1. What is your earliest memory of how or what attracted you to photography?
I’d like to begin on a different note. You know how Indian children are supposed to follow in their parents’ footsteps? So, I often joke that I became a photographer because my father was a radiologist! But, in reality, he was also a serious amateur photographer in his youth. I grew up seeing his photographs of my mother and elder brother in our family albums. When I was in school, I somehow got interested in the camera club and actually borrowed his negatives to make prints in the darkroom, and that was my introduction into photography. So, if I dig into my memory, that is what I would say got me attracted to photography.
2. 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 was studying in Pune doing a bachelor’s course when I became interested in photography during my final year. I had no access to any kind of a photography course. However, there were a couple of things happening simultaneously. I got interested in photography and at the same time I got interested in theater, and since I had some friends at the Film Institute, I got interested in cinema, as well. I informed and taught myself by looking at whatever photography books and magazines I could lay my hands on, especially the masters. As far as learning the techniques was concerned, I had a friend, Pintoo Choudhary, who was a cameraperson teaching at FTII, who was my informal tutor. He would give me lessons over cups of tea in our usual hang-out restaurant. For instance, he drew out Ansel Adams’s Zone System on the back of a Charminar cigarette pack. And then there was also this fantastic education I was receiving by watching great cinema at the film institute – a place that I would sneak into often. That’s how I taught myself photography.
3. Do you think it is important to receive formal training in photography?
Yes, definitely. I think a formal training is certainly required, but when I say that I don’t mean that only technical training is required. I think photography being an art form should be taught with an education in the liberal arts, and that is something that I wish I had received.
4. If you were to design a photo program for young Indian photographers, what would it look like?
At an undergraduate level, a photography course should be linked with liberal arts education. Techniques along with worldviews, storytelling, and language – all these need to be taught in a good course.
At a post-graduate level, it can be a more specialized, intensive course that focuses both on theory and practice, and is combined with an exposure to a whole lot of other things besides photography; such as art, painting, literature, theater, history etc.
Workshops, when available, can be quite useful. However, with so many workshops being offered now, unfortunately, what has happened is that they have become moneymaking schemes. Yes, tutors need to make money, but the workshop scene has become very commercialized. So, one has to be careful in choosing worthwhile workshops to attend.
Under the grants and fellowships program, though selections are made after great deliberation and rigorous investigation into projects, there is often very little follow up. These should be followed up by mentorships. Then better work would be produced and the photographer would stand to gain more.
5. Who or what has inspired you to pursue photography and/or continues to do so?
I came to photography by the process of ‘elimination’ rather than by ‘choice.’ Like many good Indian boys, I was going to become an engineer after finishing school. I prepared for IIT exams and was selected, though I was way down in the merit list, and therefore was offered mining engineering at BHU-IT. So, I chose not to take that up. I then went to Pune to do a pre-engineering course at Fergusson College with the idea of entering the Pune Engineering College. But this being the first year of college, I smoked too much grass and had a lot of fun, and barely managed to pass that exam. Engineering college was ruled out, so I enrolled for a BA honors course in economics. MBA programs had just started and I thought I would end up there after graduating.
While pursuing my honors course, I became involved in left-wing politics and theater. By the time I finished my BA in 1977, I was sure that I did not want to do an MBA, and instead wanted to pursue theater and do something more creative. That’s when I decided to take a year’s break and went off to Bihar, where my family is from. I borrowed my father’s camera (which he used for his medical research), and used it during this period. I also worked on a research project on the Naxalite movement that year. That is when I started photography and became hooked on the idea of becoming a photojournalist.
I feel there’s a certain kinship between theater and photography. Both the person behind the camera and the person in front are like performers. The energy during the interaction between the people I photograph and me is what makes the work better.
6. Is there a book, exhibition or body of work that has really impressed you and maybe influenced your work / life?
When I began photographing in 1977, I had very little money – just enough to buy three titles of a particular series on important photographers. I ended up with the works of three very disparate contemporary photographers – Anne Liebowitz, Mary Ellen Mark, and Duane Michals. Funnily enough, it was the work of Duane Michals that left the most lasting impression on me.
When I picked up the camera it was just after the Emergency. All these news magazines were coming out – Sunday, India Today etc. One was seeing great journalistic work, and it was an exciting time for photojournalists. Coming from social concerns and left-wing politics, it seemed the most important thing to do. It was quite clear to me from the beginning that, in photography, it was the genre of photojournalism that interested me.
7. You began to photograph the Naxalite movement in Bhojpur, Bihar, early on in your career in 1977-78. What prompted you to work with the Naxalites?
After finishing college, I spent a year hanging out with a friend, Kalyan Mukherjee, who was teaching English in a college in Chapra, and traveling around Bihar with that camera I had borrowed from my father. Meanwhile, I also had been introduced to Habib Tanvir, and decided to travel to Delhi to ask him if I could join his theater group. Kalyan, who had already proposed a project on the Naxalite movement in Bhojpur, asked me to check with the National Labour Institute as to what was happening with his project. When I went there, I met this legendary guy – R.N. Maharaj – a left-wing social activist and academic, who told me the project was sanctioned and that I should go work on it. That’s how I started working with Kalyan, again by the process of elimination and accident. It was also partly because I was already involved in left-wing politics as a student and was quite committed to working on this idea, and the fact that I wanted to become a photojournalist. All these things came together and pushed me to work on the Naxalite movement project.
The project itself did not overtly say that it was an investigation of the Naxalite movement. It was, in fact, about the impact of the intimidation of the 20 point program; about the land reforms in the Bhojpur district of Bihar, which at that time was at the peak of the Naxalite movement. We were going to villages that were the root of the movement, where incidents were happening and where the class dynamics were playing out. We were seeing incidents that were triggered by the implementation of the land reforms of the Minimum Wages Act, and which actually had led to the start of the Naxalite movement. It was the time when landless laborers started to ask for their rights and the movement was first sparked. Oppression and atrocities had continued for centuries. It was a great lesson in the dynamics of society and the caste structure, and provided a fantastic grounding for us. We had no money. We traveled by bus and walked a lot – basically roughing it, and the whole experience was quite intense.
At the same time, it was also my first major crisis with photography. I suffered from a lot of self doubt when I would arrive with my camera on the scene of an attack – a massacre with houses burning and women wailing. “What the hell am I doing here? Am I being a voyeur? Am I being exploitative?” It had an adverse effect on me, and turned me off of this kind of photography for some time. I almost decided to give up photojournalism. However, it also did lay the foundation for the kind of work I continued to do. I was convinced that I still wanted to be a photographer.
After that first year of traveling, researching, and shooting, my father made it clear that he could not support me financially and, in fact, wanted back the camera that I had borrowed for a year so that he could continue his medical work as a radiologist. But, since he was willing to support me for further studies, I went back to finish my MA in politics at Pune University. This was the same time that, although I had gone off photography, I was still hooked. Just a few months into my MA I was raving to get back to photography. Two friends who worked in a bank helped me obtain a loan under the Employment Promotion Plan, which essentially was for educated, unemployed people to, for example, buy an auto-rickshaw or a cart to sell bananas. I got a loan of Rs 10,000 to set myself up as a commercial and industrial photographer. But I sucked at this work and ended up broke and in debt. By that time Kalyan Mukherjee, with whom I had worked on the Naxalite Project, had moved to Delhi to pursue journalism; and that’s when I also decided to move to Delhi and get back to photojournalism. This was in 1980.
8. You documented the lives of the Chambal bandits in 1981 and made a book of that work – Malkhan: The Story of a Bandit King – which is currently unavailable. Why and how did you begin this work? Can you describe your experience of working on this project, and your interaction with the bandits?
After moving to Delhi, I was trying to get freelance work as a photojournalist, and wasn’t finding it easy. That’s when Kalyan told me that he was interested in working on an academic kind of book on dacoits and social banditry. Another friend Brij Raj Singh, a history graduate from Ramjas College, and I joined him to work on this book. Brij and Kalyan were going to do the research and I would make the photographs. This was the period following Phoolan Devi’s 1981 Behmai massacre. Dacoits were in the news big time and Malkhan Singh had the biggest gang. So we pooled our own resources and started work. This project was totally funded by us and was not a commissioned assignment.
By this time, I had made peace with the dilemmas that I had faced while working as a photojournalist on the Naxalite project. I understood that some things have to be dealt with and work has to be done. I learned how to handle my emotions and manage to still be sensitive to any given situation. By the time I began to work on the dacoits, I was already working as a journalist. In 1981, I had documented this huge massacre in Sadhupur. I had learned on the job, and intuitively knew by then how to deal with my emotions and dilemmas.
We went around meeting people, understanding the scene with the police, met the older dacoits who had surrendered, met younger dacoits, went to massacre sites collecting stories, and I photographed all of it – the entire approach to documenting this was very journalistic and documentary in nature. However, we soon realized that, in order to do a comprehensive book on social banditry, we had to meet the biggest gang, which was the Malkhan Singh Gang. In 1981, his gang was the most feared and the largest gang in the Chambal area. Malkhan Singh had been crowned Dasiya Samrat by all the other gangs of that time. He was the acknowledged Supremo. We wanted to record and observe their dynamics and started trying to make contact with the gang. We hung around in the area that provided him with the best sanctuary and started sending messages to him and his gang, but he did not agree to meet us. It so happened that, at some point, Malkhan was contemplating a surrender. There was a tradition in Chambal where dacoits had surrendered in the past due to initiation of the Sarvodaya movement by Vinoba Bhave and the Madhya Pradesh Government was willing to listen to him. We had, by then, established contact with some who knew his whereabouts in a region of Uttar Pradesh, where he often took sanctuary. Malkhan eventually figured that having three journalists who were interested in his story might help him to negotiate his surrender. Dacoits in general are vulnerable, as they stand the risk of being sold out by their families, friends, fellow dacoits, and other informers. As a result they are very suspicious. However, he agreed to meet us on the condition that we negotiate his surrender. It was a quid pro quo. We were able to spend time with the gang in exchange for negotiating his surrender. It was only after nine months of working in the Chambal that we finally met Malkhan. The then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Arjun Singh, was interested in the surrender. We were meeting both sides now, and took officials into the ravines to meet with Malkhan and his gang. However, the real opportunity for me to photograph the gang was in the last few days before the surrender, wherein I became the guarantee that things wouldn’t go wrong – that there would be no fake encounters, and that the surrender would happen smoothly. In the end, it worked out for all of us.
As we came to know Malkhan Singh, we came to the conclusion that instead of working on an academic book on social banditry, it would be a book about him – Malkhan: The Story of a Bandit King. We then spent the next year working on this book. From the time we began work on the project until we finally came out with the book, we had spent two and a half years, and none of us was paid for it during that time. Kalyan had some money, which he put in. Brij perhaps had something, as well. I asked for money from my father again, and he gave me Rs 400 a month for the first six months. This was enough for me to buy film. I would buy a 100 foot roll of Tri-X. I already had the one camera I had bought using my bank loan, and another that was borrowed. We lived very cheaply in villages, in peoples’ homes, traveling by train and by bus. We were also working on stories and getting them published in magazines, so I started making some money and didn’t have to rely on my father’s support after the initial six months. Also, Malkhan Singh had a reward on him and, upon his surrender, we received a part of the reward money, since we had negotiated his surrender and made it possible. I don’t remember the exact amount – it was something like Rs. 35,000-40,000, which was a hell of a lot of money in those days. And, with the surrender, I became famous. I no longer had to go back to the industry and the newspapers struggling and begging for work as a darkroom assistant or a junior photographer. I was a star photojournalist.
I continued doing freelance work and getting it published. We had a home in Delhi, by now, and my wife Ragini was able to take care of the bills, as she had regular work. I was getting assignments. To be honest, we lived cheaply and didn’t need much in those days. It was all cool.
9. You worked as a photojournalist with the Patriot Newspaper, India Today, and the Outlook Group of Publications until 2001, after which you have worked independently. Please share your experiences.
In early 1984, as my career as a photojournalist was taking off, Patriot came onto the scene in a big way. They had received a large influx of money to modernize and they were the first newspaper to go for offset and phototypesetting. It had some of the best journalists in the country. Though I was not on the staff (I was on an informal retainership), I had a kind of enviable position and was able to do things on my own. For instance, in the summer of 1984 I convinced the editor R.K. Mishra, who was actually quite supportive of me, to send me to Punjab to work with Shokeen Singh, their Punjab correspondent. This was when Bhindranwale had the say over the Golden Temple and both were constantly in the news. I ended up shooting pictures and sending captions, and the paper would print them on the front page, six columns or sometimes eight columns, independent of any article.
The Patriot was a left-wing paper founded by Aruna Asaf Ali. They had this Vietnam Friendship Society going, in which they were quite active. The Vietnamese Government / Army was withdrawing troops from Cambodia (then called Kampuchea) and the paper was asked to send the Doordarshan TV crew to cover their troop withdrawal. Doordarshan declined, however the Minister of External Affairs said that if The Patriot wanted, they could send in their correspondent. Even though I was only on retainership, R.K. Mishra asked if I wanted to go. I jumped at it, and ended up spending a month in Cambodia and Vietnam, without a reporter or correspondent. I was 27 years old then, and was on my own, making pictures and learning about this country and filing images. The Patriot ended up publishing a book of this work, entitled The Survivors, Kampuchea, 1984. This also resulted in my first exhibition. I made the prints in The Patriot‘s darkroom, and we had the show in Delhi and Calcutta.
On 31 October 1984, Mrs. [Indira] Gandhi was assassinated and the anti-Sikh riots followed. Though I was still on a retainership with The Patriot, I was actually working more than full time. I wanted to continue freelancing; however, they insisted that I join them full time on staff, and I was designated Chief Photographer for their magazine Link. I must say that we Patriot photographers did a fantastic job documenting the riot situation that occurred as a result of Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination. Every day for 18 days The Patriot carried a photo essay; the front and back pages carried huge photographs. The hawkers were selling the paper in ‘black.’ The printing was beautiful. The entire photography team – in-house and freelancers – was going out and making photographs. We all were super charged, and we did good.
In 1985, I was asked to go cover the Ahmedabad riots. Though The Patriot refused to buy me an air ticket, I went off and bought one on my own, otherwise I wouldn’t have made it in time. I documented the riots and filed the pictures. When I returned, they reimbursed me for the air travel. I then took off to cover the 1985 elections on my own, and traveled with NTR, photographing and filing my pictures. Basically, I would decide on my own what to cover and I would travel and make pictures and file them, which they ended up printing many times on the front page – large. And then the Punjab elections came up and I was moving around documenting that. The paper was getting noticed in no small part because of my images, and this caught the attention of Raghu Rai at India Today. I had met Raghu only twice. While I was at The Patriot, I had been offered a job by a wire agency, which I seriously considered. However, Raghu had advised me against joining it, as that could lead to frustration and that I was better off working for a magazine. He had said that he would call me if a position at India Today opened up; which he did. I joined India Today in 1986, and I think I made the right decision.
I was the junior most at India Today in Delhi. Raghu Rai was Picture Editor, Bhawan Singh was Chief Photographer, Pramod Pushkar was Senior Photographer, and there was Hariom Gulati. All of them had been around for many years. And then there was me. I didn’t even rate a table to work from, and I was using my personal gear. Soon, Hariom left and I had my own work table. Working at India Today was a totally different experience from The Patriot. At The Patriot I was like a loose cannon, where I could do what I wanted, and here I was the youngest and most junior. But it was a great time to work with them as a photographer – it was staggering the resources they had and were willing to put into a photo story. They put great rigor into the stories and were mindful of everything to the last detail. This was a huge learning experience for me. Because of Raghu’s stature, the position of photography in India Today was enormous, as well. Even the editor would not mess with Raghu. And, because of him, photography enjoyed an exulted position at India Today. We could enter the art department and insist that our images could not be cropped, which caused resentment, but Raghu was a star and he would fight for us and make us fight for ourselves, too.
I had the opportunity to work on some fabulous stories while I was there. I traveled to many places where I hadn’t been before, and was getting published well. I was sent to Mizoram, where I stayed in a camp for days to document the Mizo surrender, and earned a huge spread in the magazine. I worked on a huge multi-city story on water scarcity in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. I ended up working with the best journalists in the country. It was a fabulous era to be working as a journalist and photojournalist. And I did very well for myself and was acknowledged by India Today for the work that I was producing. I stayed with India Today for almost 10 years.
I think it was 1989 when Raghu left India Today and, like I said, there was a certain resentment toward his position there. So after he left, there was a backlash on the photography department. Towards the end of my tenure at India Today, the hierarchical system became quite pronounced, where the designation determined the perks and the pay. At the end of the day, in spite of the experience I had, I could only be a ‘photographer’ while the journalists and writers, who were younger and less experienced than I, were in better positions and getting better pay. This was a bane, so I went to Arun Poorie, editor and owner at that time, and told him that I had been there for nine years, everyone acknowledged that I was doing consistently good work, yet people younger than I were being appointed as editors and getting benefits that I was not. I asked him to do something about this, to which he said that he could not. I then quit India Today in 1995. Unfortunately, this malaise continues in news organizations even today. You stay too long and you realize you are not getting paid your dues. You don’t get paid for your hard work and loyalty. Period. As a result, people today work for a couple of years at a place and move on to another organization.
In fact, when I decided to quit India Today, Namas Bhojani a dear friend, was the photo editor at Business Today and was leaving. Arun Poorie asked me to take over the same position. I laughed and said that I want to be a photographer and not a photo editor.
This was the time Outlook had just started and, ironically, I joined them as a photo editor. However, I accepted this position at Outlook because they were a start-up, and I knew that I would have control and be able to influence the way it established how stories would be done, what kind of images would be used etc. And, fortunately, the magazine decided that besides Editor Vinod Mehta, they would appoint four positions that would lead the four departments. The Feature Editor, Political Editor, Business Editor, and the Photo Editor would be Associate Editors. So, we all four were appointed as part of a think tank. In addition to being a photographer and photo editor, I was also an associate editor, as a result my role was quite big.
When I joined Outlook, I was quite aware of my role and what I should be doing. I chose to move away from the role of photographer to the role of photo editor. There were many ideas I wanted to implement that earlier I never had the chance to do, and now I was in a better position to do so. In fact, there used to be weekly meetings during which stories were discussed, ideas shared, and decisions made. I made it a point to meet with the entire photo department after the edit meeting to read out the list of ideas that were discussed in the weekly meeting and give the photographers opportunities to proactively choose stories on which they wanted to work. If you pick up the earlier issues of Outlook, you will notice that, in terms of photographic stories, we were already doing what many magazines had not done, even though they had been in circulation for a long time.
To be honest, in an ideal situation, like in International News Organizations, the Photo Editor cannot be working as a photographer. Also, the Photo Editor’s job is a different kind of a job, requiring different skill sets than that of a photographer. However, the media industry in India is different, wherein we have staff photographers as opposed to the West. The Chief Photographer / Photo Editor post arrived in Indian journalism with the idea of promoting the position of a photographer who had been working for a considerable time in that organization. In fact, until 1977, there was no position of Photo Editor, and this position came only when magazines were launched, post emergency, and perhaps Raghu Rai held the position as the first Photo Editor in Indian journalism. However, people were promoted to this position not because they had any skills or training to be a photo editor, but only because they had been there for a number of years. This happened then and still continues today.
In October 2001, I quit Outlook after working there for six years. I was, at that point, deputy editor and was tired of working as a boss. I wanted to go back to being an independent photographer. Quite early on, while working at Outlook, I had renegotiated my contract from employee to consultant, which meant that I could work with non-conflicting magazines and publications. So, by the time I resigned, I was hopeful that I would be able to survive on my own. Almost immediately, I was sucked into becoming a consultant for the Indian Express. In November, Shekhar Gupta, the editor at the time, came home on a Sunday and said that they wanted to launch their Sunday edition as a separate paper. I was appointed Deputy Editor Operations as a consultant, and I worked on launching the Sunday Express. This meant coordinating with the entire editorial team to decide on the content, and putting it together; working with the technical department to decide how images would move and how the internet and phone lines would work; working with the printers that printed the paper and determining what technology would be used; working with circulation to figure out how the paper would get to various centers in time; and coordinating with the brand managers. I did all this and launched the paper on March 24, 2002. I quit in April. I was working as a consultant and making good money; however, I wanted to move on and be on my own as an independent photographer.
Between 2002 and 2006 or so, I did a lot of freelance assignments for foreign papers, publications, magazines, news agencies, and worked on some pretty amazing assignments. I was, for a long time, wanting to work in the nonprofit sector, mainly because I had worked on stories that dealt with society and social issues since the beginning of my career, and from my days with India Today and Outlook. By 2004, the nature of media was changing quite a bit. I was not interested in the story of the ‘other,’ and most publications, especially newspapers, defined themselves as no longer being ‘journalistic’ papers, but as ‘products’ that were ruled and governed by advertising. It was becoming very difficult to get people interested in the areas that I wanted to work on. Incidentally, during this time I got two calls – one from The American Indian Foundation and the other from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which led to a long-term engagement with them that continues even now. I have worked with each for more than 15 years. I was able to work on issues outside of journalism that were of interest to me. I have not worked as a photojournalist for quite some time, though I was, once again, called to be on the jury of the World Press Photo in 2016. (The first time was in 2002.)
10. Please talk about your Indianisms collection. When did you become aware of the pronounced Indian narrative in your work?
I almost never work on a project. I start working on various things and at some point, as the work grows, it becomes a project. The trajectory of my work is that it usually comes out as an exhibit maybe eight, ten, even twelve years later.
I frequently get bored and pissed off with my own work and that’s when I dive into all my earlier work. I look at it closely and very often a pattern emerges of what my concerns are and have been. I then collect those strands and start working on ideas that have been lurking around in my work, and eventually a project develops from this process.
For example, in 2000 I was totally frustrated at Outlook, and a long-term project I had been working on (the contemporary situation of the Maharajas of India) was going nowhere. I had become interested in this subject while in university, inspired after seeing Satyajit Ray’s film, Jalsghar. I did some work on the subject while I was with India Today; wrote a book proposal; met publishers; but was not making any real headway. At that point I started to re-examine all my work that was almost all about ordinary people. (I hardly ever photographed celebrities.) I discovered a pattern. There was a similarity in the way I had photographed the ex maharajas and ordinary people in various situations – an equality of gaze. I knew I had something. I put this work together calling it Kings and Commoners, which became an exhibition in 2000. Later, Sanjeev Saith took the same work forward and published it as a monograph called King, Commoner, Citizen, in 2007, with newer images added to it.
The next show I did was Pan India – A Shared Habitat, in 2010, which drew out of the panoramic images that I made from 2000 onward. Most of the images were made outside of work assignments. It was in 2005-2006, when I was again pissed and bored with my work, that I began sifting through the panoramic images I had made, and realized there was an entire project sitting there waiting to be completed. So between 2006 and 2008, I continued to work on this, and upon completion had a show and a book.
My work on Indianism has come through a similar process. In 2010, I was again questioning myself – where do I go from here? How do I go forward? I started to revisit all my earlier work. I started using a mirrorless camera that allowed me to shoot in square format, which was the same strategy I had used in the past – that by changing my format I would be forced to see and look differently. My Indianism work has grown out of strands that existed in my earlier work – things that are Indian or have a certain Indianness in them – often with some irony, sometimes ingenuity, and sometimes inventiveness.
Here I want to clarify that there is no ‘Indian’ narrative in this work. In fact, it would be pompous and presumptuous of me to say so. There is this popular conversation that goes around about what is Indian photography and what isn’t and I don’t prescribe to this thought. I don’t at all believe that my work has an ‘Indian’ language in terms of photography. However, at the same time, I am interested in the ‘Indianness’ of things, which can mean all kinds of things. It can mean the way we do things. It can mean the language. It can, at times, be vernacular, and at times be kitsch. Sometimes it can be subtle, and at other times be over the top. So it can be anything and I have been interested in it all this time – unconsciously or subconsciously. As I continue to work on this project, there is no particular thing that I am looking for. I am allowing myself to wander and photograph things that interest me. Sometime next year, I will start reviewing this work and give it a final shape.
11. Given the fact that a zillion images are produced and circulated on a daily basis, in your opinion, what is the place for serious reportage and journalistic images?
The digital age changed reportage and photojournalism for good. There is no going back. The fact is that in recent years breaking news images often have not been made by professional photographers. Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was recorded on a cell phone by one of her supporters. Having said that, the place for serious reportage remains – however diminished it may be.
In my opinion, it’s the same in other photographic genres, as well. For instance, if you look at the nonprofit sector, a lot of the work that I do is just competent work that any young photographer can possibly make, given a good digital camera. And that’s mainly because the expectation of what is required is sometimes not very challenging. Having said that, I still get assignments from people who value the experience that I have. They value my intuition, my ability to see things that others might not see. So, I guess in the same way, in reportage and journalism an experienced person with an eye, with training and rigor, is required.
12. What draws / drew you to the subject matter you are pursuing in your current work?
There have been certain concerns that have always been latent. For instance, my Pan India work came out of my subconscious interest in the changing visual landscape of India. I wouldn’t say that it all comes from a gut feeling. What I would say is that it always comes from something that interests me inherently – whether it’s society, or landscapes, or people. It’s a mix of many things. And then research becomes an important element while working on any story or project, whether it’s a photography project or a curatorial project. My way of working and doing things is to immerse myself in that work.
13. 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?
I am a firm believer in the use of technology. I embraced the use of digital cameras as soon as I could afford to use them and moved to using the mirrorless technology soon after it was launched. I straddle both the worlds, shooting square and 2:3 in digital and using film with my panoramic camera. I believe digital technology has been great for the medium.
However, whenever there is a situation of plenty, there is a problem of mediocrity. Also, the shift from the digital camera to the use of the mobile phone camera has created a kind of consumerism in the process of image making. Instead of stopping to look and see, we are constantly ‘taking’ photos. This is the real down-slide of digital photography. This is across cultures and all societies. Even senior photographers are shooting too much and shooting everything without pausing and looking. The production and consumption of images has become relentless.
14. Do you ever find yourself creatively ‘stuck?’ Is there something that is particularly helpful to you in overcoming this?
Yes, I do. I do get stuck very often. This happens every 4-5 years. Then there are two things that I do – I dive back into what I have done and reexamine all I have done, right from the beginning, to inform myself of what I think is wrong and to find answers. The second thing I do, as I mentioned earlier, is that I change formats, which forces me to look at things differently.
15. 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 don’t put in enough effort. I should but I don’t. As I said, my first show was in 1984 and the second one was in 2000, then 2007 and 2009. And since then I have not had a show. I have had group shows but no solo exhibition in the past 10 years. Showing my work is important to me, as it certainly helps my creative process; it brings to realization something that I have been thinking about and working on for a long time. It is definitely not a distraction and is a part of my larger practice.
16. Do you think there is a universal language that photography uses? Do you think that Indian photographers are finding that they are judged by western criteria and standards?
There is no escaping that photography was invented in the West, though it came to India pretty soon after, and it was in the hands of practitioners that had a certain western sensibility. There have been off-shoots or practices, wherein people have been successful bringing in their own sensibilities. However, I am not a believer in the idea that there are ‘ethnic’ or ‘national’ types of photography as such – like Indian photography or Thai photography or Indonesian photography or Belgian photography. Yes, there is photography coming out from all these places, and each may have distinct characteristics for various reasons, like subject matter or different approaches. However, in essence, they all follow a certain universal language of photography.
Photography is an international language. Yes, there was some photography that came out of Japan that was distinctive because it was based on a Japanese classical tradition or art form. Perhaps the same can be said of French or American photography at a time when it originated there as a language. But no one talks about a ‘Canadian’ photography. So why the hell are we talking about an ‘Indian’ photography?
Whether Indian photographers are finding that they are judged by western criteria and standards is more to do with the question of a worldview rather than a question to do with photography. When you think about western views and standards, these are not photographic standards. For example, the Exotic India was the flavor of the West at one time; at another time it was the Poverty; and then at another time it was The Rich in India and the Economic Boom. So people get sucked into this worldview and start producing work to suit that market and cater to it. This is a problem. And, of course, there is a lot written about the ‘western gaze’ etc. This was prevalent at a time with ethnographic photography that objectified people. Otherwise, in the majority of the work that we are seeing produced now, I am not sure if the idea of that ‘western gaze’ is relevant any more.
In the context of India, I’d like to add that there is too much attention paid to the subject matter that the photographer is dealing with, rather than the photographer’s approach in making that work. A photographer becomes relevant because s/he is focusing on the ‘real’ India at one time; and then, suddenly, India moves on and it becomes the ‘other’ India. The thing about India is that it exists with multiple identities at any given time. A sadhu meditating in the Himalayas exists alongside the poverty, along with the malls and the super rich. So if a photographer is going to be judged based only on the subject matter, then that’s totally unfair. The approach should be looked at and critiqued.
17. How did you happen to start the Nazar Foundation? Please share a bit about the Nazar Ka Adda and the Nazar Monographs that you came out with, with a special focus on Kanu’s Gandhi, as you were the project curator.
The Nazar Foundation was first formed for the Delhi Photo Festival. Some younger photographers around 2009 had been telling us that they were fed up with the photography scene. There were some galleries that were showing photography and photographic prints were being sold. However, there were a lot of photographers who existed outside of this system and were on their own. They were quite fed up with the so called ‘gatekeepers’ controlling how work was shown, where it was being shown; and with this whole idea of their works being mediated by gallerists and curators. They wanted to have a photo festival of their own that encouraged new work and showed it in an open, public, and democratic space. So, Dinesh Khanna and I got together to start this festival and, in order to do so, we had to start an organization. That’s why and how The Nazar Foundation came into existence as a nonprofit trust. Leading up to the Delhi Photo Festival, we started holding the Nazar ka Adda to get this disparate group of photographers to meet, show, and discuss their work. In fact, almost the entire team of the Delhi Photo Festival came out of the Nazar ka Addas.
We had about two lakhs of rupees that was left with us after the first Delhi Photo Festival, so Dinesh and I decided to publish the first Nazar Photography Monographs. One of the reasons for this was that at that time there were not many self-published books coming out. Of course, the whole scenario has changed completely now. So, we decided to publish a monograph series with Sanjeev Saith as editor, and the criteria for selecting the work was that it had to be important and good – which a commercial publisher would really have no interest investing in. The first monograph was Vicky Roy‘s Home Street Home. Then we came out with When Abba was Ill by Adil Hassan.
I had an association with Kanu Gandhi’s work since 1997. I was familiar with the work and had contact with the family, and had actually published a part of this work first in 1998, in Outlook, and then in 2011 had shown the work at the Delhi Photo Festival. Kanu Gandhi was an important photographer who had never been given his due. So, it was a natural step for us to want to publish a monograph of his work. In fact, his exhibition that is based on the book has been on tour ever since. It was first exhibited at the Sabarmati Ashram and traveled to Kolkata, Goa, Mumbai, Dhaka, Wales, Morocco, and Cairo, to name a few places. As the book’s editor, the book is really Sanjeev’s. But since I had been associated with the work for such a long time, and had helmed it, I have always been the project curator.
The 4th title we published was Ronny Sen’s End of Time.
18. How did you came up with the idea of starting the Delhi Photo Festival? Can you share a bit about the festival and the impact it had in this part of the world? Will we be seeing a 4th edition of the festival?
I already mentioned how and why Dinesh and I started the Delhi Photo Festival. Since we were holding the DPF in a public space, photography in India became visible and prominent. I won’t say that the photography art scene was influenced, perhaps there was impact there as well, and I can’t measure that. However, the impact was in terms of bringing a whole disparate community together, and this connection has survived to quite an extent till today. It gave rise to the idea that a photography community exists irrespective of the various genres of photography. And, in my opinion, that is the DPFs biggest contribution. Also, the fact that a lot of international work was being exhibited at the DPF in public spaces led to the exposure of more people to newer work, which was different from what they had seen before. We had very senior photographers and artists come together, as well, talking about their practice.
As you know, the Delhi Photo Festival has been in suspended animation. From 2013 Dinesh and I were making it clear to the entire DPF team that they need to step up and take leadership and that we needed to step down. By 2015, I already had decided to move to Goa and Dinesh wanted to get back to his projects, but unfortunately, there was no one ready to take over the festival. Many people on the team had the skills and the leadership qualities to take over. It’s just that all of them were at an age – late 20s and early 30s – when they are busy advancing their careers, and they can’t be blamed for the fact that we’d been unable to figure out a model wherein the staff could be adequately compensated for their work. Dinesh and I both came to DPF as established photographers, successful enough that we could give our time without being paid for it. But it’s not possible for most younger people to do that.
As you know, the DPF was the first festival to be launched in India and, since then, festivals have mushroomed across the country. So, we had a few aims. We wanted to: (i) show works of younger people in democratic spaces (ii) build a community (iii) have avenues to show works. If you remember, the DPF was very instrumental in bringing the community of photographers together, and this sparked the emergence of other photo festivals, which have provided similar possibilities. So, even if the DPF is not revived immediately, these other festivals are providing opportunities to fulfill the goals with which DPF set out.
If and when a team comes up and says we are ready to revive the DPF, then it will be revived. In fact, we even have some funds stashed away for this to happen. However, questions will need to be asked at that time. What is the need for the DPF to be revived? How will it be different from the other festivals?
Unfortunately, what is happening is that all these photo festivals, even the ones outside of India, are now just clones of each other. Though they fulfill regional needs and aspirations, and having more avenues to show photography is welcome, the content is often repeated. People are repeated. You see the same 300 people at each and every festival, and you find yourself speaking in an echo chamber wherever you go. The ‘Photo Festival’ is now a formula that is being repeated with the same small community of people visiting and participating. I find that it has become so incestuous.
For the DPF to revive, two needs must be met: first, there has to be a pressing need for such a festival; and second, there has to be leadership to take it on.
19. 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 have been thinking about this question and there is nothing I can really think of. However, I do wish that I wasn’t as tall as I am so I didn’t have to bend so much all the time to come at eye level with people. And like most things in my life, everything that leads from one to the other is through an experience. I arrived at photography after going through different experiences. My projects came out of having experienced them. I experienced what my country went through politically and this shaped my awareness and ideology and led me to do the kind of work I did. I had to do my B.A. in economics, I had to do theater, and I had to travel across Bihar researching the Naxalite movement to arrive where I did and end up pursuing photojournalism.
20. How would an interested collector go about buying your work?
By contacting me directly or through my website: https://www.prashantpanjiar.com
21. If you didn’t do photography, what other career might you have pursued?
Well I tried theater, and if I had pursued it I could have ended up directing and perhaps become a filmmaker. I don’t know. The one thing I would have hated doing was to be in a corporate job and anyways with my politics, it would have been quite difficult to do that.
I would like to add that if I had not been a photographer, the sum total of my life would have been very small. As an individual person, how much joy can you have or experience; how much sorrow or hardship can you experience? Having been a photojournalist, and then continuing as a documentary photographer, I have been able to experience so much more through the lives of so many people that my own life has grown at least a hundred times. This is the biggest gain for me.
I would like to tell the younger lot that measures of success are different for different people. Yes, you can measure your success in terms of the number of shows you have had and how much money you have made. However, this is another way of measuring success: how has your own life been enriched? And that can also mean a lot.
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Photograph © Manish Sinha
20 November
