Why There Are Not Many Homai Vyarawallas in Indian News Media? - III

Let us keep Homai Vyarawalla's unique past context as well as the contemporary experiences I mentioned earlier in perspective while dealing with the question with which this three part series started: Why there are not many Vyarawallas in Indian news media?


Here is my take on the question. May be subjective and out of place. But I also strongly feel that there could be other and more stronger pointers than these for the absence of Vyarawallas in contemporary contexts.


1) Across the world, then and now, Vyarawallas are rare to find. The simple reason could be the essentially masculine character of the equipment and the person who exists as a photographer/photojournalist.  Probably, cultures across the world have inadvertently inscribed in the collective psyche of the members of the two genders what is appropriate for them in terms of professional careers. The Vyarawallas and Margurite-Bourke-Whites probably were born in the contesting planes which came to question the culturally inscribed gender bias. But such a view also raises another question: are there not contemporary planes which challenge culturally inscribed gender bias?


2) Women have always been constructed as the subjects of gaze by painters and later photographers and much later by cinematographers. What becomes of the subject of gaze when women themselves work with the essentially masculine apparatus of camera? The problematic of the relationship between the subject of gaze and the subject that is gazing through the camera lens as well as the predominantly male audience of the visual materials then and now may be at work in structuring the rarity of women photojournalists/photographers in Eastern and Western worlds. As a result, we see more women on the ramps in Milan and New Delhi than camera wielding women on the sides of the ramps.


3) The widely held notion that photojournalism is a field work intensive profession probably acts as deterrent for even those women graduates in communication, who master the craft early on and show adequate passion for the medium of photography, to drop the idea of making a career in photography/photojournalism. The bosses who are in charge of news rooms also subscribe to this notion and contribute to the circulation of the myth that the medium is essentially masculine in terms of its technology, applications and practitioners.


4) A simple reexamination of the past and present photographs showing tourists carrying camera bags in important tourist places tells us that the male members of the groups or families are more likely to be in charge of holding and using the camera than their female counterparts. Even though, the number of women carrying cameras have grown exponentially after the advent of tiny digital cameras, the scenario explained above remains as dominant. Probably, the male dominated cultures require men to sport enough gadgetry to render them more masculine and more dominant than their feminine counterparts. Remember the prevailing cultural notion in many cultures in the East and West that men are techno savvy and women are not.


There could be more reasons than this, but we shall make efforts to have more Homai Vyarawallas and Margurite-Bourke-Whites to help us to relate to our political and social realities.