My World, My Lens

The disappointment was visible. When Lata Mudma a young tribal woman typed the name of her Madia Gond tribe in the search bar, Google didn’t throw up many results. “There is hardly any information about us,” she told the other members of her community.
Lata and other boys and girls from the tribal community had come together to attend a photography workshop organized recently by Photography Promotion Trust at Golaguddain village in Gadchiroli district of Vidarbha. The realization dawned that though they can take pictures with their mobile phones but they didn’t know how to put them out there for the world to see.
“The entire idea of conducting this workshop is to pull these marginalized youths into mainstream,” explains Padma Shri awardee Sudharak Olwe, a professional photographer who, along with filmmaker Nirman Chaudhary, tutored the tribal youths into the intricacies of wielding the camera. “Photography is an art form which initiates conversation and encourages communication. We live in a digital world today and its painful to know that there were many here who had never held a camera in their hands,” he says.
The use of cameras on their phones was limited to taking selfies. But in this workshop holding a camera gave them a different perspective. “They learnt to tell stories about themselves, their culture, their way of life,” says Olwe and adds, “We kept the language of the class very simple and concentrated on just three words-aperture, shutter speed and composition. They were shown pictures from around the world to understand the language of a camera and how it can narrate a story.”
Christened as ‘Grassroot Storytellers’, the initiative is supported by Photo South Asia and Murthy Nayak Foundation. It will also extend to other states with tribal population like Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Gujarat.
“We plan to conduct 12 workshops per day at different places with the help of local NGOs and people from these tribes. The idea is to empower tribal youths with skill development without interfering with their culture and lifestyle. Through photography we hope to encourage them to document their tribes which are extremely vulnerable and under threat due to declining population, migration and other social and economic factors,” explains Olwe.
The project may not bring a drastic transformation but it has helped in promoting communication, bonding and access to what is happening in the world. “There are now conversations about the possibilities which they have begun to explore. They have learnt about wildlife photography, wedding photography and even fashion photography. Also, now they can take better pictures with their phones and post them on social media, something which they were not able to do so far,” says Nirman Chaudhary.
“What we have done may not be sustainable but there is a plan for a masterclass, opening of internships and doing vlogs,” he adds.
Excitement is already building up among those who have attended the workshop. School education may be about getting jobs, but this workshop was about developing skills which can be monetized. “We are now planning to pool resources and set up a studio here which will be run by people from our community,” says Santosh who holds a government job at the tehsil office.
“We may get an opportunity to be the photographer at official functions besides taking photos at weddings and other community events,” he hopes.
For Lata, a kotwal at the tehsil office, the possibilities are immense when she looks around through the lens. “There is so much in our village that is interesting and needs to be shown. During monsoon this region gets cut off from mainland due to floods. I want to post pictures of that season on Instagram and Facebook so that the world may know about the beauty of this area, our hardships and how we cope with calamities,” she says.