Recent years have see an increase in photography exhibitions, Bollywood films that touch the topic of becoming a photojournalist (Wake Up Sid), wildlife photographer (3 Idiots) or even fashion photography (Fashion) as well as photography courses in Mumbai.
Such an close up on the subject has inspired a good portion of the urban and 2-3 tier cities Indian youth to take up Art streams at University and has also made parents rethink their pre 90s economic liberation fears and the entire socio economic safety of pushing their kin into becoming an Engineer or Doctor.
On the other hand, this new importance given to photography, has also inspired and attracted to the big cities of India, many international photographers who are said to be more into abstract, conceptual and creative photography than famous Indian photographers such as Raghu Rai, who are known for their photojournalist skills and aesthetics considered classic or realistic in nature - people, landscapes and what is blatantly recognized as travel photography or the India of Lonely Planet.
Whether all this fits into theoretical debates on Art or to the various theory discourses accepted by the international photographers community and the Art snobby/bitchy fraternity, is up to the reader/thinker to decide, but no one can deny that if we are looking for a unique style of photography to be called Indian, we can surely look at every single bharatiya wedding album sitting in the dusty corner of any kind of accommodation of any kind of society strata in India be it a slum in Dharavi, a penthouse in Bandra, a chawl in Lower Parel or a historical building in Colaba.
Half of the job in the business of wedding photography relies on retouching softwares used with digital files and cameras and that allow photographers to bring out the creativity accumulated during their IT and graphic design studies. People and married couples are copied and pasted in floral, architectural and spaceshipeal backgrounds; colors are emphasized and saturated; peoples faces are on the gothic white skin tones and everybody needs to essentially look very serious, sad and solemn in the face of a new scary wedded life.
Has anyone seen an exhibition on Indian wedding photography? Is this form of clicking considered Art? Folk Art or Commercial Art? Will any of the new generations of photographers embrace this career path?
Some international photographers and artists would surely define Indian wedding photography a popular, kitsch or even folk art form, while Indian photographers despise these media products and do not consider them as part as anything. Does this repeat overrun issues of the Kantian philosophy of aesthetics popular in the 18th century? Has not the artistic clock stopped into the past by 300 years for these critics/artist/individuals who are not even interested in this form of media production? Is Postmodernism only part of the Global North?
Many questions to answer and many photographs to be clicked and looked in India. International photographers escaping the first decade of millennium recessions can surely become refuges of the great virgin lands of India. Art galleries better keep their doors wide open.