Dimitri Beck, the Director of Photography at the Polka magazine based in Paris, France, has been running around in the humidity of Chennai all day: from Senate House to Madras Literary Society Library to Government College of Fine Arts, pausing often to click quick shots of places and people. After an intense week-long workshop on photojournalism, organised by the Chennai Photo Biennale, Dimitri, has one day left in the city. Amid all the hurry, I catch hold of him in Government College of Fine Arts. And I have 10 minutes or less, I am told.
As we finally find a relatively quiet spot near a dilapidated sculpture on the open ground, we hear students ramble, and a popular Tamil song play in the background. Dimitri, a journalist himself, starts off with an assuring nod. And, thus we tune out.
The road less travelled
Photojournalism happened by chance for this French journalist with a strong background in economy and business. At the age of 21, he realised that a career that actually “did something” is what he should and would pursue.
Photographs had always been a part of his childhood. “Pictures of injustice, of strong moments when humanity was hit harshly — like the defence for civil rights in USA, the Vietnam war and the impact of Hiroshima, all of the pictures of the Second World War... I grew up with these images,” says Dimitri, adding that these visual memories were permanently etched in his mind at a very young age. These pictures, in fact, led him to work on something that would make people open their eyes to what’s going on around them.
In 2004, Dimitri moved to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he ran a bilingual feature magazine, ‘The News of Kaboul – New Afghanistan’ and was also coordinating with a local photography community where he trained photographers on visual storytelling. “In the two-and-a-half years that I was there, I realised that a story can be best seen and analysed only by the people of the land. Which is why I worked with the photographers there, to make them tell stories on an everyday basis,” continues Dimitri as he talks about the “country ruled by men”, which is “still very much a conflict zone.”
What was heart wrenching for him was documenting the women’s lives in this country. “I have only seen them struggle. Even the kids, for that matter,” he says, adding, “And the Taliban is killing more civilians than soldiers or foreigners. It’s not just a regular war between respective armies you know, it’s an unfair war where the Afghans are the targets.”
If no one heard the tree fall
Straying back to the topic of photography, I ask him about his idea of the perfect photograph. “The visual power of the photograph should align with the information,” he says almost immediately, explaining that the picture should speak for itself. “That is the difference between photojournalism and documentary photography — or any other form of photography. The former should be connected to facts: facts that can be followed easily through the picture itself. For the latter, the photographer is allowed to be more personal,” says Dimitri.
On that note, he also admits that it is very difficult to be completely objective in this line of work. “But at the same time, the responsibility of the photographer lies in how factual he is,” he says.
As for invasion of the subject’s privacy — a question that invariably arises when you document their lives — Dimitri has a fitting answer. “They are surprisingly very welcoming. Because people who face injustice, know that if what they are going through is not shown visually, it’s almost as if the injustice doesn’t exist.”