Yesterday morning, I was on a brief shopping visit to Mylapore East Mada Street. What got my attention was a group of camera wielding young women taking their shots in the small lane where the Jain temple is located. They are probably students working on their photography assignments as a part of their communication programmes in a city college. All of them sported DSLRs on their necks. There are as many graduate programmes in communication in the city of Madras as there are colleges. And a majority of the students who graduate in these programmes are girls. Probably, a good percentage of them land jobs in news media as journalists. We find these days a growing balance between male and female bylines in mainstream English newspapers of the city. But I am yet to find female photojournalists hogging credit lines in news photos or among the yelling group of male photojournalists in the wells of the public auditoriums in the city. I am told that even in USA, only 15% photojournalists are women.
In 1997-1998, while working at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Thirunelveli, myself, colleagues, Kanchanai RR Srinivasan, and nine female students ran an experiment to train women photographers for nearly a year. Eventhough, the explicit objective of the experiment was to train women photojournalists, there were other objectives which aimed to provide a plane of empowerment for both the camera wielding young women students and their subjects as well as their onlookers in a conservative rural setting. The experiment culminated in an exhibition entitled "Nizhalgalin Nigam." (The Reality of Shadows). The exhibition showcased the photographs of the women students who felt immensely transformed in their skill sets, world views and self-esteem levels. One student, Ms Krishna Priya, reached great heights when her photograph was adjudged the best in the 1998 International Journalism Competition organised by EFA UNESCO.
Today I chanced upon a news item about the ongoing exhibition of the works of India's first women photojournalist, Homai Vyarawala, now 97, at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi. Unlike the female student photographers I saw in Mylapore East Mada Street, who had sleek DSLRs, Homai was lugging cameras that weighed more than six pounds when she was covering epoch making as well as ordinary events for Indian and foreign newspapers such as Bombay Chronicle, The Illustrated Weekly of India and Life.
She was the first women photojournalist in India and probably in the non-Western world and her photographs stand testimony to the key events leading to partition and India's Independence. Her major focus was on Jawaharlal Nehru and his family. That got her several unique snapshots of Nehru's personality. One photograph on the first flight of BOAC from London to Delhi shows Nehru with a cigarette in his lips and trying to light one for the wife of Deputy British High Commissioner for India. 
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