A photograph of Bismillah Khan

Once upon a time, there were no cameras. And people used to paint all that was needed to be recorded — be it landscapes or portraits of people or monuments.

And thank God for it, for it would have been a global cultural loss — imagine no Vinci would have painted Mona Lisa, no Botticelli would have bothered to paint Birth of Venus or no Rembrandt would have bothered to create Night Watch and countless other images that are part of the world’s cultural canvas. But having said that, one can’t undermine the role of the camera in taking realism in art many steps forward — so much so that it has become an independent art form.
I personally am not too much of a camera person — much rather experience it there and now rather than be trigger happy and just keep insanely recording people and places and go home to see where all one went. I will never forget how I resolutely refused to carry a camera on my first visit abroad way back in the 80s when cameras were not so ubiquitous. And even I fell for its “recordability” factor when I went to visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London and promptly acquired one to freeze the moment for posterity!
I have always maintained that the camera is a mere tool and the person behind the viewfinder is the real thing — after all, it is all a matter of perception and viewpoint. On the occasion of the World Photography Day today, I can’t help recall the wonderful photographers I have been lucky enough to work with. But more importantly it was my dearest friend, journalist Amit Prakash, himself a wonderful photographer, who actually woke me to see photography as another form of art and not just something one interspersed writing with — as a newspaper journalists often do!
My first ever professional assignment was to cover the handmade paper making in the Sanganer village in Rajasthan for the Span magazine way back in the 80s. The photographer I was to go with was Avinash Pasricha, the then photo editor of the magazine. He was serious almost to the point of being intimidating and so much senior that I, a mere cub reporter, then couldn’t help feeling supremely insignificant! Then when I became the arts editor of The Pioneer, we would have battles royal for he would insist on a byline even in single column pictures!
He has considerably mellowed over the years and we went on to do seven books on classical dance together subsequently, with another book on jewellery in the pipeline. He even modelled for me in Ehsaas. Of course, he is the absolute doyen of photography of performing artists. Talking of performing artistes, the Ehsaas confluence of wearable where I worked with photographer Umesh Verma on the book by the same name, with nearly 35 performing artistes and artists walking the ramp in works of wearable art, was a collectors’ piece largely thanks to Umesh’s stunning photographs. He managed to work with a glittering galaxy of absolute stars or rather each one a moon in his or her own right, without any problem, thanks to his own persona that was gentle yet got exactly what one was looking for and more. I firmly believe that newspaper photographers are an extremely underutilised group whose ability to perform in high pressure and difficult situations and split second timing is impossible to match by other photographers. With this conviction, I did an art book Moment in Time With Stalwarts of Indian Art using photographs by only news photographers to amazing effect. For this book I worked a lot with Manish Swarup, whose sensibilities are wonderfully refined yet quirky and his ability to draw out the person, making him or her very comfortable is legendary.
Like a true-blooded photographer he can work against impossible deadlines, in any terrain and any situation. He did most of the main portraits of my book but two portraits that will remain etched in memory are one of Pandit Ravi Shankar and the other of Ustad Bismillah Khan. He made Panditji pose next to an oil portrait and a bronze bust of his. Both the art works and the real person came in a straight diagonal line — stunning! Manish and I went traipsing on his motorbike to photograph Bismillah Khan in crowded Chandni Chowk early on a winter morning. Khan Sahib was not in the best of moods. But Manish was so charming and unobtrusive that he got one of the best pictures ever of Khan Sahib.
My latest book Garhwal Himalayas — Chorus of Solitude is with Sanjay Sharma who manages to do a range of photography from fashion to armed forces to travel with equal aplomb. His pictures tell a million tales of layers within layers — every tale eternal and yet every tale gossamer and ephemeral. He made endless trips to most places featured in this book in different seasons in his quest for getting just the right picture, including earlier this year. He waded through mountain streams and trudged through knee-deep snow in inclement weather off the beaten track for long hours to share vistas hitherto not seen. There were times I would get exasperated with him for doing the drill so many times. But he was undeterred and the results are for all to see. Refining each picture selection was one long process and tested all my patience as a curator. But, of that another time.
There are so many photographers like Bir Bahadur Yadav, Rajesh Sharma, Kamal Sahai, Arko, M. Subramaniam, Neeraj Paul among so many others, with whom I have worked with on various projects or been familiar with their work and known them over a period of time like S. Paul, Raghu Rai, Sondeep Shankar, Pankaj Mistry and others who have been co-conspirators, greatly enriching me as a person and as a professional that I can only smile fondly about our adventures!
Having worked with so many photographers in and out of newspapers, I have come to the conclusion that there are only two kinds of photographers — one who are so unobtrusive that they merge with the background to capture the best shot and other who loom large over the situation that they become overpowering and dwarfing everything else. And believe you me, the unobtrusive ones always get the better pictures! Cheers to the age of cameras!
Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com