Politics

Actually, not politics per se. I’d like to recall a statement (I credit it to Urmila, though she’s probably not the primary source)- “Everything is political”. I’d like to make a follow-up statement: “Photography is political”.

Taking photographs of glazing mountain tops and stunning sunsets is fabulous. But it is not in any manner passive. Every act of photography is active. Wrong- Every operating camera is active, political. The presence of the camera itself is enough to invoke reaction, emotional and ideological. Because the importance of visual imagery has risen, unlike the descending verbal communication, we are all aware of our visual representation. Images convey ideas, emotions and statements.

Besides the its being in-itself, the camera is also the mediator. A biased one. It is the photographer who observes, not the camera. What we see off the camera lens is maybe genuine, maybe (MAYBE) objective, but it is definitely not reflected in the photos we take (“click”, if you’re in India). It is our subjective image, not the one far away in the mountains, that we carry with us. You may go as far as to say that we photograph an experience, not a still image. We capture a moment, a certain concept, and not a multitude of objects. Every photo has a purpose, even it’s meant to be a private, personal artifact, and not a public one. It serves a purpose and thereafter follows its design. Its form.

:)

*This may be considered as a response to an individual with a speech impediment.