State of Street Photography Community in India
Though I have been doing photography for a long time, I started doing street photography dedicatedly around 2.5 years back. In Pune, there are just a couple of photographers who do it and are mostly solo shooters, infact that’s how it is mostly, street photography is a solo endeavor by the very nature of it. Instagrammers’ large fan gatherings are not street photography events, check out my blog What is Street Photography to understand more of it. In these 2.5 years I joined many groups and forums, studied various stuff online, blogs, YouTube, read some books, and discussed with many photographers.
There are two things that I observed that happened frequently, there are of course exceptions, probably I won’t be even writing this blog if there were no exceptions, but there are two very prominent things that are too evident to be overlooked.
Firstly, exclusivity of the experts and secondly, the narcissism of the novices. I know these are strong words, but I think it would be the exceptions to these who would find time to read a blog so I am not offending the readers for sure. Let me elaborate what I mean by these two observations.
Exclusivity of the Experts
There are many good photographers in India, in street photography genre as well but there are just a handful who go out to share their knowledge and experience with you, I am talking about street photography only not the travel and tourism photography at tourist locations, there are plenty making money out of those. When it comes to art aspect of street photography just a handful are helpful. Most hide their knowledge from novice photographers as if it’s some trade secret even though almost everything can be found out just by google search. There are forums in which your photos will be declined without telling you any reason, no feedback is provided on why it was not approved. It’s definitely fine to reject a photo in a forum to maintain quality but if no reason is provided it surely feels elitism and rude. This communication gap is probably the prime reason that serious street photography community in India with a population of some billions.. I lost count, has around 5000 experts and novices in total. The rest potential enthusiasts have moved on to instagrammy photography but still think they do and tag #streetphotography, we may call them names, say they lack taste, no sense of aesthetics, but the bottom-line is the experts in street photography community didn’t manage to provide a platform to encourage and groom and affordable learning resources to a huge number of potential enthusiasts, my estimate being around 200,000 or more. A few experts definitely are doing their part, but a bigger effort needs to be put by the experts to -
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help develop visual literacy among the enthusiasts, there by make it less niche
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add glamour to street photography, which the experts know is much much harder than many other genres and needs years of practice, but still doesn’t attract as much attention in India as say travel or lifestyle photography. How to add glamour can be a topic of discussion.
It’s all doable, may be with local collaborations in each city/town, or in online platforms, it need not be altruistic, it just needs to be affordable. More the experts give it a try, more the people who are visually literate, more the appreciation and understanding of the experts’ work there will be, it’s in their own benefit.
Narcissism of the Novices
Though I am using a strong word, I don’t blame today’s novice for this behavior, it’s more of the social as well as technical environment of today. When I started photography, there was no open platform to post photos, it was small forums where we posted with the C&C note to photo, meaning Critic and Comment, being critiqued was the only constant thing, be it photography or at home or school, it was a way of life, every step was judged, that was extreme. Today no step is judged, to be politically correct, homo sapiens have lost the faculty of judgement. Judgement is offensive now. If someone says “your photo is ugly” people will go buy fairness cream for themselves.
If anyone is really serious to learn even the basics of photography, it’s important to find mistakes in our own work, take others help to find mistakes in our work, when we are starting out we are clueless what is a mistake, forget what makes a good photo, we don’t even know what makes a bad photo. Do not make the silly excuse that art is subjective and your photo is your art, work just by classification of art doesn’t make it great, there’s great art and horrible art, just saying art does not make it great. Either learn to make less ugly art or give up making visual pollution.
The law today may stop our parents and teachers to judge us but the world doesn’t care about us, no one gonna hand hold us if we ourselves are sentimental about what great art we are making. If someone is critiquing our work we should try to concentrate and listen and understand what they are saying instead of justifying this and that, no one cares about our justifications, it’s just plain rude and shows we are not receptive to someone spending their personal time to help us improve. I have seen photographers with such attitude stuck at their personal peak for decades never to improve in life. Let’s give it up, open ourself, aim higher and suck the blood.. I mean suck the knowledge out of photographers who are open to share it with us.
Let’s make a bigger and better community.
Footnote: The photograph in this blog is shot by me in 2010 on 1st Day of my 1st Camera which I bought 2nd hand. I was wowed by my great skills for 12 hours then I shared it in a forum for C&C after which…
Update - All this has changed since Corona outbreak, Expert are sharing their knowledge online for free, sessions are happening every week, hard for anyone to be left out.