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Looking Back

View from the top

SUBASH JEYAN

Here is the record of a man who has seen it all, literally, in half a century of professional life as a photojournalist.

VISUAL journalists have never had it easy in India. In the history of Indian print media, think photojournalism and, barring the defunct Illustrated Weekly of India, hardly anything worthwhile comes to mind. It is all the more surprising, and remarkable, then, that T.S. Satyan should have made such a successful career out of it, spanning a period of more than five decades. Most of it as a freelancer, except for a couple of years with the Deccan Herald in Bangalore and with the Weekly in the late 1940s.

Scathing words

And, it is not at all surprising that most of his work was published abroad, in magazines like Time and Life. Satyan, who started his career by freelancing to the Weekly as a college student in the early 1940s, and is still remembered, as he says, in some parts as a Weekly journalist, has scathing words for the way in which the focus of the Weekly was diluted and allowed to die: "Barring Kamath ...They [the editors] were word men, text men and book men, like their counterparts elsewhere in the country. They did everything to ignore the visual character of the magazine that was its strong point ever since it had started" (p.308). If he has been able to achieve professional success, he says, "it is not because of the generosity of Indian publishers and editors, but due to my long association with their counterparts abroad" (p.309).

Perhaps here is a key to understanding Satyan and his work. On the one hand, Indian print media hardly provided the kind of ambience needed for a photojournalist to grow and evolve. Publishing abroad, with all the professionalism that demanded, was a necessity for survival and growth. On the other hand, growing up in the Mysore of the 1930s and 40s, when colleges had Indian and British professors, and magazines, including the Weekly, still had British editors, one suspects Satyan got keyed in early to seeing/ interpreting his subjects from a Western humanist light. As a young man growing up in Kumbarageri and Chamuraja Mohalla of Mysore, Satyan is stimulated visually by the craftsmen in the area and their lives. But, he also documents Hindu ceremonies and rites after reading something like Abbe Dubois's Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies.

Here then, is the verbal record of a man who has seen it all, literally, in half a century of professional life as a photojournalist. Apart from being a record of events he was witness to, it is also a tribute, at the end of a fulfilling career, to people he has known and respected: Sir C.V. Raman, Visvesvaraya, Yehudi Menuhin, B.K.S. Iyengar, Nehru, the Dalai Lama, Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, Krishna Iyengar, Kishor Parekh, Raghubir Singh, the list is rather long. We also get endearing portraits of some of his contemporaries, "members" of what Ramachandra Guha in the Foreword calls the "Mysore Generation", R.K. Narayan and R.K. Laxman. There is a particularly glowing tribute to India's first woman photojournalist, Homai Vyarawalla. There are also sketches of places that have made an impression on him, like Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Afghanistan.

Throughout, one is struck by the innocence with which Satyan accepts people and places simply for what they are or seem to be. As a photojournalist, Satyan thinks his prime duty is to record the present as a reliable witness. Perhaps this non-judgmental view is what makes his images fresh and appealing. But, in his perhaps unaccustomed avatar as a word man himself, one wishes there was a framework, of connections and insights, to hold together the sights he has been witness to. As it is, the book is still a valuable record.

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