That's a question, which at times is thrown at me by the silent face of onlookers when I am in middle of my work.....
Life of a photojournalist is an interesting and a privileged one. You get to visit certain places, meet people and frame them in a photograph which you otherwise would never have got the opportunity to do so. But, it ain't a bed of roses all the way.
The truth is, that at the end of the day you need a photograph which is to be seen in the papers the next morning. And the process in getting it requires that you go through a roller coaster ride of emotions. You get to experience the life of people around you, be part of few moments of their lives, share their happiness and grief, and then let the world experience it through the story which your photograph is able to communicate to viewers. It is a tough job mate!
The post mortem section at Victoria hospital is a busy place. The increasing crime rate in the silicon city ensures that it always remains so, with the activity and crowded with grieving loved ones, the police, doctors and the news hungry media. Doctors who perform the autopsy, day in and day out and yet retain sanity in their minds, I hold them in high esteem.
As a news photographer one of the difficult jobs is to get the images of relatives of victims of homicide and suicide. And it gets more difficult when you are covering the story of gang wars and the person in front of you is the wailing wife of the victim, with whom she was riding back home from a temple four hours prior to you being there. In four hours her life has completely changed. She is traumatized while you intrude into her private emotion.
The lady here is a widow of a slain small time gangster. He was killed in a revenge attack which was part of the ugly 'Arrack wars' of Bangalore city. The arrack or illicit liquor is an illegal business with huge money involved in it. A month prior to this attack, a man from the rival camp was murdered in a similar brutal fashion in front of Urvashi Theatre.
She was in a room at the post mortem section where the cops were filing a report. I along with a reporter from our newspaper walked in. There were few close associates of her late husband who were consoling her. We began to ask questions regarding the incident and she tried her best in answering them as our reporter jotted down her answers in a notepad. Just as I switched on my camera and started clicking her photographs a window was forced open and one of her relatives was standing there and calling out to her. This sent her in a hysteria and she lost control and began wailing. With goosebumps all over me I framed this shot at that moment.
Have I become cold, numb and heartless? Has it become easy for me to shoot these images in presence of people who keep judging me? The fact is that even if there is no one there to judge me I would still be judging myself.
I respect the people who have permitted me to be there in middle of their personal tragedies with an intrusive device like a still camera( the love of my life) . It amazes me that even in their hard times they were able to understand what my duty is and let me perform my work. I truly empathise with them. I also understand the sentiments of the people who are not that welcome to the idea of me breaching their privacy.
Crime photography at the end of the day leaves you emotionally drained. But the impact your photograph can have in pressurizing the law enforcement agencies to take actions to make the city a tad bit safer than what it was yesterday is rewarding.
