JOIN USWith shutters clicking more than ever, the 176th year of World Photography Day on August 19, 2016, is unfortunately also marked by the shutters going down on the oldest darkroom studio of India, Bourne and Shepherd.
The celebration on August 19 is linked with 1839, the year the French government ‘offered’ the invention to world. However, the Day owes recognition to the efforts of renowned Indian photographer O P Sharman. Concerned that there was no day dedicated to photography, he wrote letters to various photographers across the world and contacted The Royal Photographic Society, UK, and Photographic Society of America, and that’s how it started. He also pioneered the International Photographic Council in 1983.
Year 2016 saw landmark changes in the Indian photographic landscape with the closure of Kolkata’s Bourne and Shepherd studio, the oldest there is, perhaps, in the world!
Founded by British photo-graphers William Howard, Samuel Bourne and Charles Shepherd, its 156 years of rich legacy was already facing the march of digital technology when it lost its sheen to a fire in 1991 that charred most of its beautiful archives. The long-term impact of the fire compounded by legal difficulties, and the increasing dominance of digital technology finally forced the studio’s closure in June 2016.
Similarly, the Mahatta Studios, a 101-year-old company located in M block, Connaught Place, New Delhi, is closing too. Mahatta and Co, which opened in Srinagar, is one of the oldest in the country and shut its film developing studio in 1990s.
Besides studios, societies such as the Bombay Photographic Society and other prestigious societies of Madras and Calcutta served the new art since 1856. The East India Company declaring photography to be the most accurate and economical means of recording the architectural and archaeological monuments for official records, travellers etc, underlined the art's unique utility. Photography became a key element of the Archaeological Survey of India, too.
Sudhir Kasliwal, a sixth generation royal jeweller and a noted photographer who still uses his darkroom and old format cameras, says that kings loved and patronaged photography. He says: “Rulers like Raja of Chamba, Ram Singh II, the Maharaja of Jaipur, Maharaja of Benaras and other princes practi-ced this art. Ram Singh II was the first photographer-prince and the only one to start a form-al course in photography in an institution other than a photography studio. His personal studio, creatively christened ‘photukhana,’ had latest equipment.”
A vibrant domain
Ranjit Hoskote, a noted art critic and curator looks at the transition, this way: “Photography in India is, and has always been, a vibrant domain. It is an ensemble of varied impulses, ranging from photography as an extension of artistic practice, through photo-journalism, to the exploration of documentation form in the interests of historical or cultural enquiry.
“We are also blessed to have several generations of photographers active simultaneously, each representing the quest, crisis and artistic resolutions of a different moment in postcolonial Indian history, whether Raghu Rai, Dayanita Singh, Ram Rahman, Ravi Agarwal, Samar Jodha, Gauri Gill, Bharat Sikka, Gigi Scaria, Sohrab Hura or Ryan Lobo.”
He added: “(With) the widespread availability of the mobile phone camera… it is a matter of happiness to note that we have so many serious practitioners to whom photography remains a procedure of discovery with which to approach the enigmas of the social and the natural world at large - a way of engaging with the complexities of the world.”
A recent initiative is the Delhi Photo Festival, which, according to its directors, was the need of the hour. Despite so many photographers and cameras after the digital revolution, very few places existed to showcase their work in print. “It has made photography like a festival, to celebrate, to feel within and above all, huge prints,” says Prashant Panjiar.
A living legend of Indian photography S Paul, a photojournalist whose work is a narrative of India, believes the digital era of photography to be a positive omen but at the same time it was alarming for photojournalists and their profession. “Digital photography has given boom to photography but the space is shrinking for professional photographers... their designation is shrinking at the cost of the popularisation of photos.”
S Paul was the first Indian to have been profiled with a portfolio by world’s oldest and most prestigious, The British Journal of Photography in 1967 and 1969. Paul, labelled as the ‘Henry Cartier Bresson of India’ by the prestigious B&W magazine of USA, turns 87 on August 19, on World Photography Day!