What is the Importance of Photographs or Photography in India?

Photography is one of the new media forms that changes perception and changes the structure of society. It is actually leading the digital revolution in media today, especially with the advent of digital photography.
The increasing use of Social Media and the rise in new platforms has everyone classified as an amateur photographer so the need for quality photography is as important now than ever.

Photography is still art and very much a conversational component to the words we write, even at the documentary level and how we use it in the media should be treated as such.

Photography has been, since its birth, and to a degree continues to be today, a revolutionary means of communication. Images play an important role in mass media. Today’s generation rely on pictures both to understand a message and to send a message across. When we read a newspaper, for example, we look at the pictures first before reading the text, if at all. Some people just look at the pictures and read the headlines and captions, and move on to the next news story. When browsing a magazine, the images for an article leads us to understand what the article is all about. An image makes or breaks an advertising campaign as well. If the image chosen is bad, the advertisement is doomed.

The power of photography is unmeasurable and impressive. It is more powerful than any writeup or any print media, visual is always more preferable. Besides more attractive as well.

Nowadays we seem to be unable to survive without photos. A diner would take a photo before he/she starts with the food, a student would take a photo of the whiteboard instead of jogging down notes, a police would rely on photos to catch speeding cars and to keep records, and of course everyone takes photos when he/she sees something worth remembering.

Then there are also the subtler impacts such as its legacy in fine arts,film, the belief of capturing the present moment, and so on.  In the 21st Century, where the majority of photography has become digital (both in production and distribution), photography’s power lies in the various electronic devices with a lens (be it zoom or prime) and a photosensitive element (be it CCD or CMOS), in the technology of how the light is interpreted by the electric circuit, and in the shared rules/protocols of how such information is to be encoded, compressed, and decoded (RAW, JPEG, etc.) Without these, it would have been impossible to take a photo anywhere anytime with almost no cost nor trouble, to transfer light bouncing off objects’ surfaces into a digital file, and to make any use of the digital file. From the late 19th Century to the 20th, the power of photography came from the flourishing industry of film.
 

Photography changed the way we remember things. It offers instantaneity and has the ability to capture actual events, a slice of reality. Roland Barthes, a preeminent theorist of photography, said that photograph is the "sovereign contingency," meaning it is dependent on something else happening. We now look to photographs as confirmation of memory. Photography has played a large role in our conception of history. Historically, photographs provided an objective record of real events. They were key, for instance, in confirming for the public the ravages of the Civil War and horrors of the Holocaust. However, we now know that photographic images can be manipulated as well with the invent of new technologies.

In its earliest incarnations, photography was still the domain of the rich. However, the Eastman Kodak company, which invented the instant camera and cheap 35mm film, put the power of photography in the hands of the general public. Anyone could point and click a camera, making photography the most widely used art form. The ability of the camera to record the world as it is has made it an invaluable tool in scientific research. It its early days it was used to record evidence on field trips, show portraits of remote tribes people or newly discovered animal species.
 

It could be argued that the invention of photography liberated the traditional arts (painting, sculpture, even literature) from the yoke of representation. Previously, art had been used to simply reproduce the world, but photography could do that better than any other form, and much more quickly. Artist had to find new modes of operation and seismic shifts in art production, from modernism to abstract expressionism, were all conceived in the wake of photography.

A successful photograph causes a reaction in a viewer, a visceral recognition that an image's story has been told. Compelling photographs evoke emotions in the viewer by approaching the subject in a unique way, whether literally through camera angle and perspective or metaphorically through lighting, composition or technique.

-PURBALI MANDAL

Student of Amity university Kolkata, pursuing Bachelors in Journalism and mass communication (2nd year).