How Do We Best Photograph Ageing in 21st Century India?

Online search engines do not have the visual repository of what healthy ageing looks like in India today.

When I took on the mandate of the editor of the Silver Talkies Magazine, I was drawing in my years of experience in journalism whereby it was well-known a photograph accompanying a story makes it more impactful. While reams have been written about the power of photographs across cultures and contexts, I also knew very well how visual elements can entirely change narratives. But while editing Silver Talkies Magazine, I hit a peculiar roadblock: even as the magazine attempts at being India’s online magazine catering to the needs of the 55+ cohort, there are very few photographs across the Internet that depict the vibrancy of the colourful lives of India’s middle-class ageing population in the 21st century.

Type into any online search engine with specific keywords related to healthy forms of ageing, or older people looking happy, and the images that come up are of older people who are largely Caucasian. If you add “India” as a keyword to the string of words, then the images that come up are much fewer. If you delete any mention of positive emotions like “happy”, then the images that come up are of older Indian people looking rather frail, and in the economic margins of the society, waiting for fate to decide their path ahead. Simply put, search engines do not have the repository of what healthy, happy ageing looks like in India.

I had an inkling of the problem, but I turned to a senior photographer Chirodeep Chaudhuri who has worked in several newsrooms, for some more perspective. Even through the three decades in his photography and photojournalism career, he does not remember ever having been commissioned specific stories where he was required to photograph older people. Older people in his photographs were incidental. 

In the late 1990s, when he was a senior photographer at Outlook magazine, the Outlook Group also published a magazine called “Intelligent Investor” which focused on personal finance. Business magazines of the day—and some even today—would publish a photograph of a man in a suit in a large conference room, accompanying articles on finance. But Chaudhuri had to think creatively about photographs to accompany the articles in the magazine: “There was a story on automobile insurance. What we did was this: we found someone who had bought a car and had also bought insurance for the car. I visited their home—instead of visiting the man providing the insurance—and asked them if the family would be willing to go on a short drive to Lonavala from Mumbai. The photo that was published was of this family, enjoying a picnic in Lonavala, and their car in the background,” he remembers. 

Thus, the fortnightly magazine published photographs pertaining to personal finance, but with a focus on people. 

Similarly, Chaudhuri’s colleague once took a cake along to the home of the family he was meant to photograph: he had discovered that it was the family’s grandmother’s birthday. “The atmosphere of the family lit up that evening, at the arrival of the cake. The photograph could have been to promote any product, but this photograph of the grandchildren and a beaming grandmother, with everyone fussing around, became part of larger picture of middle-class India in the 1990s.”

The problem with stock images

News photographers are always on the run, making photographs across the city, based on daily assignments. When he began his career in photojournalism three decades ago, it was commonplace for photographers to look for—and depict—the stereotypes: an old woman selling vegetable, or an old Parsi man dawdling out of fire temple. “But what are their issues and concerns as they age? How could these be portrayed? Instead of probing deeper and looking for nuance, what we have are stock photos of old women with their many wrinkles. Such photos do not help us understand the process of ageing.” 

Chaudhari’s irritation with stock photos is hence understandable. He thus knows too well that while some stories might be evergreen, they metamorphose with time, and hence, the way they are told needs to change too. The biggest detriment to telling stories in an evocative manner are stock images, and that was my challenge with stories being published in Silver Talkies Magazine. 

While being considered for the position of Editor-of-Photography at National Geographic magazine in 2014, he conveyed to the management in no uncertain terms that he would not be interested to take on the position if he was not able to commission photographers. The management did not understand his logic, and that became apparent when they wanted to use stock images for a 16-page story about Kashmiri wazwaan.

“I commissioned one of my photography students, who also had an experience in journalism. She knew how to connect with people and photograph them, apart from developing her own portfolio as a food photographer. Her photographs from Kashmir were gorgeous! I was guiding her over the phone almost daily when she was in Kashmir, and the 16-pages of the magazine turned out to be a truly unique and delicious spread,” Chaudhari remembers. 

I ask him how would this translate for photographs of older people, in different scenarios; for example, the prevalence of falling among older people. “The photograph might need to show a handle in a typical Indian bathroom, or rubber mats on the bathroom floor. It might seem so simple and even silly, but this is where the skilled eye comes in,” he explains. Even as brands are evolving to cater to older populations, they have to be skillful to convey their narratives through 30-second commercials, and that requires a deeper understanding of ageing.

Other age spectrum

Strangely, Chaudhuri feels that on the other end of the spectrum are teenage years in India, which also continues to be represented as stereotypes. “It is almost like, after the movie Salaam Bombay, every photographer only wanted to pursue projects on street children of Bombay. Except for a few, they all lacked nuance and seemed like derivates of the movies,” Chaudhuri remembers. 

A magazine catering to the youth would cover various topics that is of interest to that demographic, and hence there would be a bank of images, that would be built over time based on detailed briefing, curation and editing. “In theory, that is the only way to build a bank of photos that deliver nuance. Otherwise, we will keep adding to what exists.”

One option then is to commission photographers across India, with specific guidelines, to photograph ageing in different towns and cities, and across various public and private spaces. This in turn, Chaudhuri feels, will be the starting point of a photo bank. “It will take time, but that’s the only way to do it. It is less about an investment for now, but about developing a vision and building a legacy.”

When one of Chaudhuri’s colleagues wanted to pursue a photography project on ageing in Mumbai, the senior photographer advised him to spend the next 15 years photographing his own parents, three times a year, on their respective birthdays and wedding anniversary. This, he believed, would build up a project that would reveal the passage of time, and a portrait of ageing. “But he did not follow my advice, and he followed the same old pattern of photographing six old men sitting near Gateway of India and laughing. It lacked intimacy,” Chaudhuri grimaces. 

“There are many gaps in the systems, but this is where we get to build new systems,” says the ever-optimistic photographer.

Until such gaps are filled, and towards not fulfilling stereotypical tropes, I choose to accompany this article with something rather generic: that of a camera looking out to the wide world.