There are at least three good reasons to talk about photojournalism.
First, people don’t usually talk about it.
Second, earlier this month, ThePrint was presented with the International Press Institute India Award for its coverage of the Covid pandemic, and among the seven journalists whose work was recognised, three were photojournalists — Praveen Jain, Manisha Mondal, and Suraj Singh Bisht, all of them from ThePrint.
That’s huge, that’s remarkable. It means photojournalism is alive and clickety-click, right?
Err, not exactly. Which brings us to the third and perhaps most important reason to write about news photography in this Readers’ Editor column: Are photojournalists now treated like dinosaurs, relics of the past? I ask this because, smartphone cameras can produce high-quality, high-resolution photographs, and selfie shooters consider themselves accomplished photographers.
“I think we are just a few years away from not being around,” says Praveen Jain, photo editor at ThePrint. “Unless we find ways to remain relevant, we could be a dying breed.”
That would be tragic — if journalism is the first draft of history, then photojournalism is surely its lasting memory.
Don’t believe me?
Close your eyes and think of the most defining or significant events of modern times, and you will see them in a series of snapshots. From the atomic bomb mushroom cloud over Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II, overloaded trains sagging with refugees during Partition, MK Gandhi’s funeral, John F Kennedy Jr saluting his assassinated father in 1963, the girl child being buried after the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, Babri Masjid domes during their demolition in 1992, the New York Twin Towers after the hijacked plane scythed through them in 2001, Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace in flames during the 2011 terrorist attack, and, most recently, aerial shots of bodies ready for cremation during the Covid pandemic – photographs, you will agree, are a witness to history.
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Doubts, challenges, smartphones
So, why the negative outlook for a profession that, once upon a time, relied on negatives?
Well, ironically, photography’s popularity as the world’s favourite ‘timepass’ has cast doubts over its future — as a profession. Here are a few reasons why. Increasingly, news organisations facing financial constraints expect reporters to shoot their own photographs and videos. So, the ‘usefulness’ of photojournalists is raising eyebrows — Why not simply dispense with their services and clunky equipment and save money? I am told that media outlets are reluctant to hire new photojournalists and jobs are hard to come by.
At the local level and in remote areas, the faithful freelancer who supplied photographs to the media has been replaced by the mobile phone, no matter who uses it. Access to photo services on the internet and multimedia agencies has increased exponentially too. And then there’s social media — Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter.
There’s one more fundamental issue. News and information have become limitless but fleeting, especially online, and speed is of the essence. Does the quality of a photograph, its lighting, framing — features that a professional knows best about — really matter anymore? Can’t smartphones do the job anyway?
All the photojournalists I spoke to, including Praveen, Manisha, and Suraj, accept that there’s a problem and the future does look bleak.
And yet.
“It’s not the camera, it’s your eye,’’ says Praveen who chronicled the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and was a key witness in the case against 32 men accused of planning and rehearsing the demolition. “Like death, you can’t predict news — anything can happen — you have to be there and anticipate [it],’’ he adds.
That’s why when Praveen goes to Parliament, he just stands there, waiting, waiting with his camera in hand for the right moment. “I don’t relax at all—I am always on the watch,” he says.
Because photographs tell stories.
“I always loved stories, but I was never good with words,” says Manisha, senior photojournalist. “But I have a vision, and I tell stories through images.”
That’s what good photojournalists do. They tell us stories—real news stories in a way you and I cannot. We can take photographs, but we lack the training to capture the perfect frame — and we don’t combine a sense of the news with an eye for the right image.
Oh, but live television and streaming broadcast documentary films and videos do that too. So what’s the big deal, you might ask.
The big deal is that photography, and photojournalism in particular, can capture what French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called the “decisive moment”: Images of moments that convey information, meaning, a passing emotion, fleeting action, or expression — and freeze it forever.
I am thinking of Praveen, Manisha, and Suraj’s photographs from Covid. They documented stories of the dead — bodies packed in ambulances, trucks, and the families who mourned them. Praveen captured the story of Delhi’s Covid ‘disaster’ in 17 photographs.
Photographs like these separate photojournalism from other types of photography – they make photojournalists as relevant as ever.
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It’s all ‘In Pictures’
A photojournalist’s job is by no means easy. Most tell you they feel like appendages to reporters — “second-class citizens” as one puts it. I don’t think that those of us who write fully appreciate the work of photojournalists who ‘tag along’ with them.
Most photojournalists work hard to remain in sync with the reporter to click pictures that complement the written story — seldom do they get a chance to capture standalone photos. “You have to know what the story is about and locate yourself in it,” says Suraj, senior photojournalist. “You have to coordinate with the reporter and reflect their story. And within that, you have to get the right shot with the emotion of the narrative,” he adds.
Praveen says this means the photojournalist has to be at the right time in the right place — alert, curious, sensitive, with quick reflexes. “You have to know the news, recognise the people involved so you know what to shoot and when. We develop an eye and the instinct to know the right frame. But you have to be patient,” he adds.
Manisha’s photographs of the 2020 Hathras gangrape case reflect the news sense well. The woman was gangraped by four men; her body hurriedly cremated by the Uttar Pradesh Police late at night without her family’s consent. Manisha photographed the cremation; the policeman is seen wearing a mask in the foreground.
Unlike reporters who have the luxury to talk to people at leisure, photojournalists make split-second decisions on what to shoot and what they want to convey. Whether they are in Parliament, at protest sites, hospitals, election rallies, interviews, or any other situation — their eye-hand coordination has to be far more superior than perhaps Sachin Tendulkar’s. In a developing news situation, unlike cricket, they have no time to get their eye in before they execute a shot.
With experience, the process becomes automatic. Good photojournalists know what to anticipate and where to position their camera to get that one special shot.
All the photographers I spoke to said that empathy with people was vital. News photographers tend to be on better terms with politicians, officials, and aam janta than reporters. In fact, people like Praveen guide and assist young reporters on their assignments.
During Covid, they had to remind themselves that no matter how distressing the moment before their eyes, they had to shoot it. “It’s my job to bring the news to the platform,” says Manisha. “But I try to be as sensitive as possible, especially with women and children.”
Fortunately, ThePrint has kept the faith. Not only do the photojournalists travel frequently out of Delhi on assignment with reporters but they also do their own photo essays — look up the In Pictures section for some outstanding news photographs. Have a look at Suraj’s sequence of shots on the day after Diwali in Delhi—especially the one showing pigeons dotting an electricity wire.
News and feature story photographs have been integral to the success of ThePrint. When the IPI-India Award was announced, Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta mentioned that the recognition was a timely reminder of the continuing relevance of photojournalism.
And so say all of us.
Shailaja Bajpai is ThePrint’s Readers’ Editor. Please write in with your views, complaints to readers.editor@theprint.in
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)