Amit began his project looking at the wider effects of drinking on his community in Jharkhand. However, after his father had an accident – as a result of drinking – Amit started to focus his photography on his own family: “I realised that my father’s drinking was affecting the whole family and I wanted to document something of this.”

Amit Topno was born and raised in Nichitpur, Jharkhand, where he now works as a Community Correspondent with Video Volunteers. “Documentation of the tribal area in which I live is limited,” he says, “and so through photography I hope to add something to the historical records that we already have.” By doing this Amit aims to give a realistic impression of life in tribal areas of India. To see Amit’s photo series on his father’s drinking, click here.

“I was not initially invited to participate in the Magnum project. I only got a call at the last minute when one of the other correspondents pulled out.

At the first session in Ranchi, we were set an assignment to follow someone for a whole day. For my subject, I chose two women and a child who ran a small roadside tea stall. I entered the place and ordered tea from one of the women. Normally I don’t smoke in public, but since I was unsure how to start a dialogue, I also asked for a cigarette. This gave me the excuse I needed to build a rapport, something Olivia and Sohrab had talked about during the morning training.

After I had finished my tea and cigarette, I explained why I was there. Despite some initial reluctance to being photographed by a man they did not know, the women agreed to help me. I myself was a bit uncomfortable though. I could see other customers in the shack watching me photograph and wondering what I was doing. I didn’t want any trouble, and I avoided extreme close-ups as it felt too awkward. Nonetheless, I ended up staying there for three hours and I did get some nice shots. On the whole, the experience was a positive one. It taught me to think on my feet and build trust quickly with a subject.

Through that preliminary workshop I learnt that to do any work with respect and integrity, it is vital to first establish contact and gain consent. Photography is an intimate art. From looking at an image, one can gauge the relationship between photographer and model. When people take photographs from a distance, it always seems to me that they were not really connected with their subject. Working as a Community Correspondent with Video Volunteers, I am used to making videos about issues, but the challenge I have often faced is getting close to the people I film. I feel that photography facilitates a much deeper bond.

In the three months between the first and second workshop, my father had an accident while drunk. I had not initially planned a story around him, but now found myself housebound as his nurse. I could not go out in search of new material, and my series for the Goa session grew from there. I soon realised that he should become the focus of my work, and that this was a chance to photograph a subject I was already close to. My father’s alcoholism has affected our whole family, and so I felt the topic was one I wanted to explore.

The equipment we were working with was basic. My camera had no zoom, and the flash would stop functioning when the battery was low. It was also a manual device, something I had no prior experience with. This meant that I had to learn the intricacies of lighting, positioning and framing. I think I gained considerable technical insight through the whole process. It was also a great experience working with Olivia and Sohrab. Their style of teaching was simple and, as I speak some English, I was able to share ideas and contribute to group discussions.

In the future, I would like to do a photo series on tribal communities where I live. Information on adivasis in the Indian media is patchy and inaccurate, and nobody really knows anything about us. I want to show something of our reality, something that is true, through stories that outsiders do not normally see.”

This project is a partnership between Video Volunteers and the Magnum Foundation. funded by The Fledgling Fund. Magnum Nominee, Olivia Arthur, and Delhi based photographer, Sohrab Hura, delivered the workshops.

 

To read more about the workshop series, click here. To read about CC, Reena Ramteke’s experience at the workshop, follow this link.

 

“Many photographers have looked at government schemes in rural India, and yet with Reena’s work there’s a sensitivity that is clearly difficult to capture. Reena spent a lot of time with the woman and children at the Anganwadi centre, and this paid off in the final series that she produced.” – Photographer, Sohrab Hura -

Reena Ranteke was born in Gariaband, Chhattisgarh. Recognising that not many women were working as photographers in her area, Reena wanted to change this trend. “I see photography as a way to tell the truth about what is really happening in society” she says. To view Reena’s work on the life of an Anganwadi worker running a nursery school in rural Chhattisgarh, click here.

 

“Before coming to the Magnum Workshops, I was not very confident about my photography. I would take pictures now and then, but there was little variety or experimentation in my work. I knew nothing about the medium and I did not put much thought into it. When I got invited to be a participant, I felt it might be because my visuals were weak! I was very keen to attend the workshop though. To me learning is a life-long process, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to better myself.

In video people can be made to speak, this is of course not an option with photography. It is necessary, therefore, to find other ways in which to communicate what the subject is thinking, saying or doing. So much can be conveyed through good framing. But I learnt that this process takes persistence, time and effort. While a video report can be completed within a week, a photo series can take months.

Between the two sessions, I worked on a story about the Anganwadi scheme, established by the government to help combat malnutrition in rural corners of India. (These centres provide basic health care to people living in India’s villages, including contraceptive counselling and supply, nutrition education and supplementation, as well as pre-school activities.) Initially, I wanted to expose what I perceived as the ineffectiveness of such programs at the ground level, but this altered when I met an Anganwadi worker who seemed to be bringing about real change in her village. I thought why always show the negative side of an issue when there’s also some good there.

At the second workshop, we focused a lot on editing and there were times when I felt a bit lost. Establishing an easy group dynamic is not always straightforward, and we often struggled to agree on which shots to include. In between editing, we were also given a photo exercise. The task was to capture the different ways people make money in Goa. For me, Goa brings about an image of beaches, and so I wanted to photograph a profession related to the sea. Accordingly, I chose to concentrate on the tourist boats that take people on sightseeing trips. I took some pictures of boatmen working and would have liked to delve further into the story by joining one of the boating parties, but I’m actually afraid of water!

I enjoyed the experience of working with Olivia and Sohrab, in both Ranchi and Goa. Despite the language barrier, I felt we communicated well. I learnt a lot through the whole workshop, and it has inspired me to explore photography as a medium in my future ventures.

At present, I am working on a story about a pregnant lady in my neighbourhood, documenting the experiences and challenges she is faced with. I have 122 photographs so far, which I am in the process of sending to the Video Volunteers office in Goa. In addition, I would like to do a project on a tribal woman who runs a small-scale business in my village, selling breakfast from a cart. A mother of three, she has to wake up at 5am each morning in order to finish her duties as a maid in two separate houses, before setting up her food stall. The woman is a pillar of strength, and it is stories like hers that I would like to tell.”

 

This project is a partnership between Video Volunteers and the Magnum Foundation, funded by The Fledgling Fund. Magnum Nominee, Olivia Arthur, and Delhi based photographer, Sohrab Hura, delivered the workshops.

To read more about the workshop series, click here. To read about CC, Amit Topno’s experience at the workshop, follow this link.

The Beginnings of the project:

In November 2012 Video Volunteers and the Magnum Foundation joined forces to set up a participatory photography project for Community Correspondents at Video Volunteers. To view all of the photo essays created by the CC’s, click here.

The genesis of the project was a meeting in 2011 between VV co-founder, Jessica Mayberry, and world-renowned Magnum photographer, and President of the Magnum Foundation, Susan Meiselas. Magnum is one the most well recognised photo agencies in operation, started in 1947 by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David Seymour and George Roger. For its part, Video Volunteers is excited at how collaborations between professionals and citizens can shape journalism and the arts in the future.

VV selected 20 Community Correspondents, nearly all women, and Magnum picked photographers interested to work with them, which included Magnum Nominee, Olivia Arthur, and Magnum Foundation Fellow, Sohrab Hura. There were two workshops of four days each, one in November 2012 in Ranchi, Jharkhand, and one in March 2013 in Goa. Follow the links to read more from CC’s, Amit Topno and Reena Ramteke on their experiences from the workshop. 

Workshop 1: Ranchi

The first workshop, titled ‘Storytelling through Photography’, focused on creating visually strong, contextualised images and building a narrative into picture stories. Our CCs are strong at activism but sometimes less skilled at visuals, and we knew photography was a great way for them to develop a better eye. Furthermore, this workshop was a chance for them to explore visual media through a new lens.

“I like taking photographs. I usually take photos at weddings and family functions, but this workshop has brought a new dimension to my work. I’ve learnt concepts like framing a shot, which will not only help me take better photographs, but also improve the quality of my videos”, said Reena Ramteke, one of the participants.

In between the first and second workshop, correspondents took photographs on pre-decided assignments, receiving feedback as they went along from the Olivia and Sohrab.

 

Workshop 2: Goa

At the start of the second workshop participants presented their work from the past three months and received further comments from the trainers. In some instances individuals had taken over 7,000 photos. Olivia and Sohrab had their work cut out as they tried to get the CCs to begin thinking about how an edited series of photographs might appear.

We sat with Olivia as she went through Saroj Paraste’s photographs of a disabled girl.“I chose to photograph a girl who doesn’t have hands,” said Saroj. “She had come to my village and I was touched when I heard about her. I wanted to tell her story so that it would be an inspiration to other people who have disabilities. Since the girl was at first not keen to be photographed, I spent a lot of time making her feel comfortable. In the end she grew very fond of me and was happy to be a part of the project”.

Despite being a skilled video maker, the process of spending such a long time with one subject and getting to know them was an entirely new experience for Saroj. But she excelled in the task, as noted by Olivia: “There were some portraits that were very intimate and showed the strong relationship she’d built with her subject. What was special about the story was the trust that this girl evidently had in Saroj.”

On the third day, correspondents began editing their work in small groups, focusing on trying to assemble a tight series of ten photographs. Olivia and Sohrab assisted them with this, before uploading the images to a blogging space. The final photo-stories cover a range of topics from alcohol abuse to superstition in India to the encroachment of the Dal Lake in Kashmir. All of these images as well as photographs of the workshop can be seen here.  

The second workshop closed with a presentation to a group of journalists in Goa at the VV head office. This was a chance for our correspondents to present their work and answer questions put to them by the audience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Impressions of the Workshop:

Amit Topno whose project was on alcohol abuse in rural Jharkhand spoke about his subject, his father: “In my community, the men like a good dose of mahua (local liquor made from the mahua flower) and I often see the ill effects of this on their lives and those of their families. While looking for a subject I didn’t have to go far. A few days before I started taking photos, my father broke his leg in a drunken spell.”

Asked about his experience of working with the group, Sohrab Hura said: “To work with such a diverse group has been a pleasure. We’ve seen real progress in their photography between the first and second workshop. My hope is that one day these people will have their images published and exhibited alongside international photographers.” To this end, correspondents will continue adding to their body of work to further develop their stories in the coming weeks and months.

The project is a partnership between Video Volunteers and the Magnum Foundation. funded by The Fledgling Fund. Magnum Nominee, Olivia Arthur, and Delhi based photographer, Sohrab Hura, presented the workshops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video Volunteers has received a $200,000 grant from the Oak Foundation to strengthen our work in Jharkhand, a Central Indian state with a high concentration of Tribals, where VV has been working for over a year now. With the Oak Foundation’s support, VV will be expanding to include two community correspondents in every district, conducting several hundred community screenings and creating new strategies to get state-wide impact.

Our Community Video Units are a model of hyper local, community-owned media. Our IndiaUnheard model is a model of a national community newswire. VV considers this an opportunity to create our third significant model of community media in India. In Jharkhand, we will be creating a replicable model for state-wide community media. Such a model will be both broad enough that a large diversity of stories will come out, but small enough that many of the advocacy issues will overlap and deal with the same government agencies, and that the community correspondents are close in geography and can support each other.

The Oak Foundation grant is also a chance to invest in innovations and best practices – such as new methods of community screenings and of pursuing state-wide campaigns – that we can then scale up through our national IndiaUnheard network.

 VV’s Founding Director Jessica Mayberry recently received a fellowship form Ashoka Foundation. Read her profile here .

More than 30 years ago, Ashoka’s founder coined the term ‘social entrepreneur.’ The award VV’s Jessica has won is one of the most distinguished awards someone in the social sector can receive. Ashoka describes its work and what it aims to catalyze with these words ‘Ashoka is leading a profound transformation in society. In the past three decades, the global citizen sector, led by social entrepreneurs, has grown exponentially. Just as the business sector experienced a tremendous spurt in productivity over the last century, the citizen sector is experiencing a similar revolution, with the number and sophistication of citizen organizations increasing dramatically. Rather than leaving societal needs for the government or business sectors to address, social entrepreneurs are creating innovative solutions, delivering extraordinary results, and improving the lives of millions of people. It is this insight into the power of social entrepreneurs that led Bill Drayton to found Ashoka in 1980 and that continues to guide Ashoka today.’

Video Volunteers is honored to receive this award. Jessica says the award reflects the innovation that is at the heart of VV’s work and the “creative and community-centered approach we take to problem solving.”