As expected, Frank Heidemann's lecture on the 'Photographic Processes and Artefacts,' hosted by the Dept.of Mass Media and Communication Studies, University of Madras, on 18 09 2009, evoked a very good response. A good number of senior professors (from disparate disciplines such as philosophy, history, statistics and public affairs) along with students in Journalism and Communication, Electronic media and other courses attended the first session of the Media and Society Seminar Series and enjoyed the lucid presentation of Prof.Frank Heidemann. Prof.Steve Hughes, SOAS, University of London, whose work on early Tamil cinema audience is well known, was also in the audience.
After making clear how photographic processes and their artefacts emerge (with the five splendid visual examples shown by him), Frank moved on to the Q&A session with a thought provoking observation on the social status of wedding photographer in India and the implications of the social practices the wedding photographers enact in violation of accepted Western cultural codes of privacy, public behaviour and, more importantly, what is expected of a service provider like a photographer in a social function like wedding.
I could not have waited for a more opportune moment to talk about the social practice of photography in particular and wedding photography in general, drawing on the thoughts lurking in my mind. I could not answer Frank in a direct manner as I wanted to provide more fodder to the students in the audience to come to terms with taken for granted photographic brands like Konica and their implications in the social practice of wedding photography in India during the 1980s and 1990s. Konica became an entrenched brand during this period, thanks to the colours and contrasts it afforded for the Indian wedding photographers to fill their albums with saturated overtones of Indian green and red, which probably Kodak lacked and Fuji could never cater to.
In my opinion, the social practices of wedding photography (and other kinds of photography) are determined by the cultural sanctions wielded by the performers of rituals to subject the supposed benefactors of rituals to any kind of performative demands. The Western social codes of privacy and the normative client-service provider relationship do not count here. What counts is the willingness of the benefactors of rituals to submit to the authoritative demands of the performers of rituals.
In the fragmented spaces of the wedding halls in Tamil Nadu, two sites remain as evocative witnesses to the above mentioned. The ornamental canopy under which the bride and the bride groom take their vows and complete the rituals required to become husband and wife is a supposedly sacred site.
This is sacred for religious and non-religious reasons. Among the non-religious ones, what comes to my mind as very important is its spatial significance on account of its nature to allow the projections of various gazes. This is a site where the unauthoritative public gaze is projected on to the gaze of the couple, which becomes a willing collaborator to the authoritative twin gazes of the priest and the photographer, along with the supervising gazes of close family members.
This site is spatially bounded by the four pillars that hold the canopy. This site is also spatially separated from the site where the audience is seated in rows of plastic chairs. Between these two sites, there is a site which is liminal and does not have any boundaries. This site is located simultaneously inside the sacred space where the couple is seated and inside the larger site of the hall where the audience is seated.
This site is more akin to the ruptured boundaries of India's wildlife reserves where the wild animals and human beings make frequent crossings in to each other's territory. This is the site of the Indian wedding photographer. He seeks to roam like a wild tiger or wild elephant simultaneously in what is not his territory and what is his territory. The deep incursions by the humans at the peripheries of India's wildlife reserves have created a liminal site which seems to belong to both, from their respective viewpoints and behaviour. But if one goes by the wisdom of logic, the site of a wild life reserve can only belong to wild animals and not human being, however greedy they are, if the wildlife wardens and their bosses in governments pull up their socks and put a stop to the emergence of a contentious liminal site.
This analogy becomes instructive once we appreciate the dissimilarities between the liminal site of the wedding photographer and the liminal site at the peripheries of wild life reserves. The former is a culturally evolved and accepted co-creation of the wedding photographers and their benefactors, the families of the bride and bridegroom on the dais. Here the wedding photographers act as the performers of the ritual of wedding photography and the families of bride and bridegroom act as the benefactors and co-performers. The ritual of wedding photography ought to be seen as a once-in-a-life time ritual for the couple. This ritual is also emblematic of the liminal site where the public gaze of the audience intersect the collective gaze of close relatives in a manner structured by the authoritative and supervising gaze of the wedding photographer. The gaze of the couple is more a disempowered one, notwithstanding the happy moments the couple are made to project to lens of the authoritative gaze.
Contrast this liminal site and its authoritative and helpless co-performers with a concrete, sacred and well bounded site where the religious rituals of the wedding are enacted under the decorated canopy. Here again, we have the rituals, their performers and co-performers. The rituals are demanding because the priest in the performer seeks to be demanding and wields an authoritative gaze which is meant to direct the gazes of the couple and their family members.
The priest is no different from the wedding photographer who commands and disciplines the subjects of his gaze. He does not move from his strategic location, on the right side of the couple. Like a wild animal who knows that its territory is intact, he stays within his territory. But the wedding photographer behaves more like a wild animal that seeks to survive on the edges of liminal territories. He moves, back and forth, sideways and sometimes projects through the crowded bodies on the dais in a manner he deems fit, without evoking any protests or murmurs. He can not evoke any murmurs or protests because he exists like his counterpart, the priest, as the performers of two key rituals in any Tamil Nadu/Indian wedding. The priest and the photographer are as essential to the wedding as the couple. The rights of the performers of rituals can be allowed to supercede the rights of the benefactors of the rituals, because there is a need to relive rituals and ritualising in the fading and dusty albums/videos of the wedding couple who have been blessed to live longer and together!!!
The culturally and socially evolving practice of wedding photography also seeks to live longer and stronger by spilling its implications onto other planes such as news and event photography in India. When we look at the strange behaviour of photojournalists and event photographers in public spaces, one stumbles for the right words to describe their unethical and abominable antics in performing their rituals. They usually yell, command and eventually emerge victorious in getting their subjects on the dais to do whatever they are commanded to do. It is a common scene in public spaces where the photographers from the local and national newspapers miss no opportunity to command their subjects, however low or mighty they might be, in the process of getting their well posing subjects doing their own rituals (cutting ribbons, releasing books etc.,) on the dais. The news photographers are only reenacting and reliving the ordinary wedding photographers in their own culturally determined (or depraved?) sites.
After making clear how photographic processes and their artefacts emerge (with the five splendid visual examples shown by him), Frank moved on to the Q&A session with a thought provoking observation on the social status of wedding photographer in India and the implications of the social practices the wedding photographers enact in violation of accepted Western cultural codes of privacy, public behaviour and, more importantly, what is expected of a service provider like a photographer in a social function like wedding.
I could not have waited for a more opportune moment to talk about the social practice of photography in particular and wedding photography in general, drawing on the thoughts lurking in my mind. I could not answer Frank in a direct manner as I wanted to provide more fodder to the students in the audience to come to terms with taken for granted photographic brands like Konica and their implications in the social practice of wedding photography in India during the 1980s and 1990s. Konica became an entrenched brand during this period, thanks to the colours and contrasts it afforded for the Indian wedding photographers to fill their albums with saturated overtones of Indian green and red, which probably Kodak lacked and Fuji could never cater to.
In my opinion, the social practices of wedding photography (and other kinds of photography) are determined by the cultural sanctions wielded by the performers of rituals to subject the supposed benefactors of rituals to any kind of performative demands. The Western social codes of privacy and the normative client-service provider relationship do not count here. What counts is the willingness of the benefactors of rituals to submit to the authoritative demands of the performers of rituals.
In the fragmented spaces of the wedding halls in Tamil Nadu, two sites remain as evocative witnesses to the above mentioned. The ornamental canopy under which the bride and the bride groom take their vows and complete the rituals required to become husband and wife is a supposedly sacred site.
This is sacred for religious and non-religious reasons. Among the non-religious ones, what comes to my mind as very important is its spatial significance on account of its nature to allow the projections of various gazes. This is a site where the unauthoritative public gaze is projected on to the gaze of the couple, which becomes a willing collaborator to the authoritative twin gazes of the priest and the photographer, along with the supervising gazes of close family members.
This site is spatially bounded by the four pillars that hold the canopy. This site is also spatially separated from the site where the audience is seated in rows of plastic chairs. Between these two sites, there is a site which is liminal and does not have any boundaries. This site is located simultaneously inside the sacred space where the couple is seated and inside the larger site of the hall where the audience is seated.This site is more akin to the ruptured boundaries of India's wildlife reserves where the wild animals and human beings make frequent crossings in to each other's territory. This is the site of the Indian wedding photographer. He seeks to roam like a wild tiger or wild elephant simultaneously in what is not his territory and what is his territory. The deep incursions by the humans at the peripheries of India's wildlife reserves have created a liminal site which seems to belong to both, from their respective viewpoints and behaviour. But if one goes by the wisdom of logic, the site of a wild life reserve can only belong to wild animals and not human being, however greedy they are, if the wildlife wardens and their bosses in governments pull up their socks and put a stop to the emergence of a contentious liminal site.
This analogy becomes instructive once we appreciate the dissimilarities between the liminal site of the wedding photographer and the liminal site at the peripheries of wild life reserves. The former is a culturally evolved and accepted co-creation of the wedding photographers and their benefactors, the families of the bride and bridegroom on the dais. Here the wedding photographers act as the performers of the ritual of wedding photography and the families of bride and bridegroom act as the benefactors and co-performers. The ritual of wedding photography ought to be seen as a once-in-a-life time ritual for the couple. This ritual is also emblematic of the liminal site where the public gaze of the audience intersect the collective gaze of close relatives in a manner structured by the authoritative and supervising gaze of the wedding photographer. The gaze of the couple is more a disempowered one, notwithstanding the happy moments the couple are made to project to lens of the authoritative gaze.
Contrast this liminal site and its authoritative and helpless co-performers with a concrete, sacred and well bounded site where the religious rituals of the wedding are enacted under the decorated canopy. Here again, we have the rituals, their performers and co-performers. The rituals are demanding because the priest in the performer seeks to be demanding and wields an authoritative gaze which is meant to direct the gazes of the couple and their family members.
The priest is no different from the wedding photographer who commands and disciplines the subjects of his gaze. He does not move from his strategic location, on the right side of the couple. Like a wild animal who knows that its territory is intact, he stays within his territory. But the wedding photographer behaves more like a wild animal that seeks to survive on the edges of liminal territories. He moves, back and forth, sideways and sometimes projects through the crowded bodies on the dais in a manner he deems fit, without evoking any protests or murmurs. He can not evoke any murmurs or protests because he exists like his counterpart, the priest, as the performers of two key rituals in any Tamil Nadu/Indian wedding. The priest and the photographer are as essential to the wedding as the couple. The rights of the performers of rituals can be allowed to supercede the rights of the benefactors of the rituals, because there is a need to relive rituals and ritualising in the fading and dusty albums/videos of the wedding couple who have been blessed to live longer and together!!!The culturally and socially evolving practice of wedding photography also seeks to live longer and stronger by spilling its implications onto other planes such as news and event photography in India. When we look at the strange behaviour of photojournalists and event photographers in public spaces, one stumbles for the right words to describe their unethical and abominable antics in performing their rituals. They usually yell, command and eventually emerge victorious in getting their subjects on the dais to do whatever they are commanded to do. It is a common scene in public spaces where the photographers from the local and national newspapers miss no opportunity to command their subjects, however low or mighty they might be, in the process of getting their well posing subjects doing their own rituals (cutting ribbons, releasing books etc.,) on the dais. The news photographers are only reenacting and reliving the ordinary wedding photographers in their own culturally determined (or depraved?) sites.
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