‘THE MOST BINDING RULE FOR THE PHOTOJOURNALIST TO REMEMBER IS THAT HE OR SHE IS JUST A MESSENGER COMMUNICATING A GROUND REALITY’
Shooting at a home run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in the 1970s, I realised that there is constant dialogue between the photographer and the subject. Every person in a picture says something in their silence; it is the job of the photographer to respect that silent voice.
Context is everything. You cannot tell stories in a place that is new to you, if you do not acknowledge the stories that already exist, says Wakaskar.
“Do your homework and learn about the place beyond a mere scratching of the surface. That is the only way to really move on from the racist past of photography, which has traditionally been the White eyes’ view of the world.”
This is also true of urban Indian photographers turning up overnight in parts of the country they know little about. Every photographer should spend some time in a new area, without a camera, as a research period, senior photographers say.
Because a press photographer is not at the scene in the role of an artist, or creator, Datta adds. “The most binding rule for the journalist to remember,” Datta says, “is that he or she is just a messenger communicating a ground reality. When you put yourself before the story, try to find ways to grab eyeballs, it starts to unravel.”
Colour, composition, tonality… everything has an effect on how you tell your story. It’s the politics of aesthetics. Look at the arrangement, light and skin tone of a CEO and a Rohingya refugee in the same magazine, and you’ll see it yourself. RONNY SEN, documentary photographer
“Colour, composition, tonality, literally your point of view… everything has an effect on how you tell your story,” says
Sen. “It’s the politics of aesthetics. I never photograph people from a top angle unless that angle is important or my last option. I try to photograph at eye-level. If the person is sitting, I sit. You look at the arrangement, light and the skin tone of an editorial shoot with the CEO of a company and compare that with photos taken of Rohingya refugees, for example, in the very same magazine, and you will see the difference yourself,” he adds.
He shares an example of a photo he took of a woman from the Baiga tribe in Madhya Pradesh. “There is a tendency to romanticise or exoticise such images. I make it a point to try to capture the person as I would if they had commissioned me to do a portrait. The proof that I got it right, for me, was that she loved the photo. That’s very important to me, especially when representing the marginalised — the person should like what they see,” Sen says.
He shares a line from the public intellectual Susan Sontag as a tip for photojournalists, particularly when covering deprivation: “Someone who is permanently surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood.” In a statement issued amid the uproar, Mamo argued that his intention was to shock.
Why use India’s geography and poverty to educate the West about their food wastage, photographers ask. Why not locate the series in the European countryside?
“If the intention (as stated) was to alert people to the food wasted at Christmas time, there are enough homeless and hungry people in the US and UK to represent that contrast,” says photographer and curator Ram Rahman.
“Many people have shot hunger in India too. Sunil Janah and Margaret BourkeWhite focussed on the famine in Bengal and southern India in the 1940s with powerful images that shook the conscience of the nation. These images are terribly trite, at best.”