Sharbendu de

Sharbendu De is a photographer, academic and writer

I N T E RV I E W W I T H SABEENA GADIHOKE

Sabeena Gadihoke is Associate Professor of Video and TV Production at the AJK MCRC and started to teach in 1990. She has a PhD from the School of

O N P H OTO G R A P H Y I N JAMIA MILIA ISLAMIA SHARBENDU DE

based in New Delhi. De has an MA in Photojournalism from the University of Westminster, London. As a Visiting Faculty since 2012, he has been teaching

Arts and Aesthetics, JNU. She initially completed

photojournalism and documentary photography at

her Bachelor’s in History at Delhi University and a

AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia. He has over 14 years

Master’s in Mass Communication from the AJK MCRC.

of experience as a practitioner having followed natural disasters across South Asia. His interests range from environmental conservation, human rights, gender and tribal rights.

Q What are the expectations of your students?

The students at the AJK MCRC Jamia are usually savvy with technology but they lack knowledge of visual theory and culture. Most students are always more keen to pick up technique as they feel that this would make them more employable.

Our primary challenge as teachers then is to supplement practice with thought; through conceptual, creative and pedagogical inputs. Practical training is accompanied by an exposure to a range of innovative working practices. This could include documentary, experimental, performative and other hybrid forms of telling stories. We do this through readings, assignments and presentations to add to their understanding and choice of visual practice. Students who study photography and audio-visual production also study cinema.

Therefore their course in media and cultural studies introduces them to interdisciplinary theory and debates around both the still as well as the moving image.

There is a special module in photography studies, which includes photo history, as well as discussions about archives, memory and the circulation of the photograph. In the future we would be introducing a module in New Media that would include photography as part of multi media platforms.

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Q What is the preferred model of teaching and what would students do after completing the course?

Teaching ranges from a classroom lecture mode where that teacher may talk, discuss and demonstrate to a fairly loaded emphasis on practical work in the field as well as the studio.

Students are keen to do independent work once they graduate. They are most attracted to the documentary but often have to earn a livelihood through online or magazine-based work that includes glamour, fashion, advertising (food) and online sales. Wedding photography in particular has been very attractive as it pays well.

Q Does the course reflect social changes and how?

The founders of the MCRC believed that the centre should maintain dynamic links with the industry while remaining skeptical of it. Most importantly, it was desired, that the students should be engaged with socio-political issues and be driven by a passion for social change and justice. This is at times a challenge as students try to negotiate the demands of the industry which is consumer driven (the huge budgets for wedding photography being a case in point) with creativity. It is a struggle, but we feel that an education in the field will ultimately make an intervention in the industry too. One example of this is the diverse kind of commercial cinema being produced today because of the entry of young scriptwriters. We hope that the same would eventually happen with photography.

AJK Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC; estd. 1983) as part of Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central University, has for years been ranked as India’s top school for journalism and mass communication. It started with its flagship course MA Mass Communication, but has over the years introduced self-financed courses like MA Convergent Journalism, PG Diploma in Still Photography & Visual Communication and MA Development Communication to meet the media industry’s demands.

All the above courses have photojournalism or photography modules, offering exposure to journalists and future communicators. The emphasis has remained on practice and while the results are encouraging, the need of the hour is an accelerated focus on visual art theory and art history to be incorporated alongside practice. There is a need for a full-time MA in Photographic Arts and/or Photojournalism and Creative Documentary Photography courses in the country, and MCRC could step in to fill this gap.

Photography has, however, always remained a fringe component here. The PG Diploma in Still Photography & Visual Communication course is the only full-year photography specific course, and like most institutions, its emphasis is practice oriented.

Self-financing courses are further limited in their scope to diversify, update equipments etc. Surprisingly, though they are self-financed, they are still governed by the University Grants

Commission rules whereas private Universities enjoy many liberties free of bureaucracy. Specific to the courses, one of the biggest challenges is the absence of expert advisory panels comprising academics and practitioners who can guide, audit the courses and recommend future modes of action including periodically revamping the syllabus. But these challenges are generic to many academic institutions in India and not endemic to any specific establishments.

Jamia also comes from a so-called 'nationalistic' or humanistic space. It keeps its course fees, for instance, within affordable limits. But for self-financed courses, it also means struggling to meet ends often leading to a resource crunch in procuring latest industry standard gear, or paying higher fees to international and national level industry experts.

Despite the challenges, in MA Convergent Journalism, we have flown in experts like Ben Edwards from the University of Westminster, Magdalena Herrera of GEO France, Erik Vroons of GUP Magazine as well as Sanjeev Saith for editing, book making and visual storytelling workshops over the years.

In 2012, I had redesigned the photojournalism syllabus of MA Convergent Journalism which on approval by the Academic Council, not only paved my way to teaching here, but also contemporised the course. Hoewever, it’s now time for another syllabus review. But since then, every year I have taught and led the subject during the 1st semester (4 months;

print & photo journalism) with a clear focus on improving visual literacy, and doing so through the production of photo books. In 2015, upon invitation from the Course Coordinator of MA Development Communication, I redesigned their photojournalism syllabus keeping the focus on social change, but also ensued teaching the subject.

Our first semester deals with print and photojournalism, but sadly most students come with no prior experience of photography.

From gradually training them on how to operate a DSLR, to issues of aesthetics and representational politics, they finally produce a photo book in order to assist them to understand narrative. I also try to explore the oft-ignored relationship between images and text over our conversations.

It has been proven beyond doubt that traditional ways of representation are no longer as effective as they used to be earlier during the decades of ‘the decisive moment’, a phrase coined by Bresson. There’s ample evidence to support the above claim too. If our storytellers have to communicate tales to our audiences in today’s age, then heterogeneous sensibilities of the audeince will also have to be taken into account.

It is therefore important to balance the curricula with an equal focus on theory and practice. I firmly believe that one’s practice will not yield a signature vocabulary unless one is reflective. An outward journey cannot be sustainable without an inward one as well.

Such an emphasis on theory and contemporary practices during the photojournalism semester has helped students to move away from media’s cliché of using poverty, violence and suffering as typical tropes, making them reflect and question representational politics. But their immediate visual work doesn’t always demonstrate this critical understanding. However, a visible impact on their approach to composition, storytelling, tackling aesthetic challenges, ethical considerations etc. has been noticed by my colleagues dealing with television production 074

and documentary film making in their 3rd & 4th semester.

In the professional sphere of Indian academia, I have not only noticed a dominant emphasis on producing immediate results thus intensifying student pressure but also exacerbating the illusion of instant gratification. Such a culture leads to an emphasis on realising a tangible output through books, multimedia pieces, films or exhibits as forms of display, if not worth. To my mind, this reduces the student’s and faculty members 'margin of error', but curbs the room (and spirit) of experimentation. Instead it should create an environment wherein failure (despite honest efforts) is also acceptable, so that journey inwards without fear of retribution is acceptable and understood.

Hence, alongside following the curricula, we also wanted the course to be meaningful to individual students at the personal level.

Last year, Tavanpal Singh, a 22-year-old student suffering from cerebral palsy enrolled for the course. Wheelchair bound and without a steady grip, he couldn’t even firmly hold the camera, leave aside take a photograph. Yet, the yardstick of assessment was the same for everyone— he had to perform to pass. Struggling to keep apace with the world, Tavan was slipping into depression. We turned his book project, titled Conquest into a self-exploratory exercise portraying his state of mind to not only speak of the self but also represent what many young differently-abled people undergo in this country.

Very intelligently, Tavan figured out a way of remotely triggering the camera using his iPhone, and eventually published his book, and passed. The most gratifying aspect was that in the process he found a cathartic release for his emotional bent. Another young female student Priyanka, dealt with her body size insecurities and complexes through her book Size +. It helped her confront her problems, broken relationships, and occasional brushes with drugs by creating a document of those who are daily, body shamed.

Other productive course-work examples include Sanjeev Saith’s ‘editing and book making’

workshop in 2017, which led to Karan Anand’s photo book titled Spiral of Nothingness which explored the influence of psychotropic drugs on the mind rather than documenting the issue as a sociological problem; another student, Sania Ashraf followed a conceptual path to representing depression, and so on...

We have also encouraged students to write on issues which affect our ways of encountering the world. Salik Ahmed’s (now a reporter with Hindustan times, Rajasthan) dissertation paper on the drowned Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, analysed myriad factors behind his image becoming ‘iconic’. He investigated socialmedia communication patterns and explored potential reasons for the same. He compared Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of the Pietà drawing references with Alan’s image, discussing religious iconography as a potential influencer.

Unless we encounter certain creative thresholds and approaches including a critical grounding in visual art theory and the history of photography, painting, poetry, philosophy, literature and cinema, the works produced by our

young visual practitioners will remain as narrow regurgitations of stereotypes.

Contemporary ‘ways of seeing’ are shifting, and with it, the need for visual storytellers to be ‘thinking’ photographers. However, for this to happen, an enabling environment will have to be created at the policy and knowledge sharing level. Alongside, cutting edge contemporised courses, budgetary allocations and academics of high calibre will have to be institutionalised into the curriculum. Young minds are like energy centres with vivid imaginations, but are presently stilted by the fear of failing and chained to meeting assignment deadlines. They will have to be given time to ruminate and figure out a way back to themselves, in order to pursue a path driven by passion and not fear. This can be aided through necessary policy level changes concerning visual art and visual journalism across Indian academic institutions.

Note: The views are the author’s personal opinion and in no way reflects the University’s official position.

Specific to the courses, one of the biggest challenges is the absence of expert advisory panels comprising academics and practitioners who can guide, audit the courses and recommend future modes of action including periodically revamping the syllabus.