Through her photo exhibition, ‘Broken’, Asha Thadani hopes to start conversations on caste, power hierarchies, and our complicity in discrimination

There is constant news about atrocities against the Dalit community but rarely do people delve into the intricacies of their lives and the reality that’s forced upon them. Self-taught photographer Asha Thadani’s new photography exhibition, Broken, in Delhi is an attempt to spotlight their lives to force people to pause and interrogate their role in perpetuating the bias.

The ongoing exhibition at India Habitat Centre is focused on ten Dalit communities across India. Thadani, who has been working on the project since 2016, stayed with these communities for long periods to understand their daily life  in depth and not just capture a glimpse of it. “I have always been interested in power hierarchies dominant in our society, and how they manifest for different communities. This project was rooted in wanting to talk about the Dalit communities beyond what is seen in mainstream media,” says Thadani.

In the series, the Bengaluru-based photographer made a deliberate choice to portray the ten communities—the mine workers of Jharia, the boatmen and fishermen of Varanasi, the Joginis of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and the goat head processors, the Holeyas—, in black-and-white. “There is an inherent discrimination, prejudice, and bias. In modern times, we call it black-and-white thinking. Also, when a frame is devoid of colour, there are no distractions, it compels you to look and feel,” Thadani explains. 

The stark ignorance about the lives of Dalit communities is something Thadani finds striking. For years, the life-threatening work that manual scavengers are forced to do, has been reported about, and yet they continue to do the job without any protective clothing or equipment. There are more such communities, which are forced to do the work that the so-called upper castes avoid because of their convenient distinction between pure and polluted.

“These communities—as seen in the photo series, ‘Coalminers in Jharia’— work in one of the worst polluted places in the world, which is dangerous for them. But this work is pushed onto them,” Thadani explains. The coalminers often have debt, so they work like bonded labour for 17 to 18 hours.

There are also the goat head processors, the Holeyas, who are given the task of harvesting the brain from the goat head, a process that involves burning its fur and hair in primitive furnaces using low-grade coal for 12 hours a day. Often their faces have burnt patches as a result of the hellfire they are made to endure every day. Thadani explains, “This happens across the country; I have shot the photos in Bengaluru. They are not allowed to enter the meat or the offal markets, and the slaughterhouse because if they touch the meat of the animals, upper caste Hindus won’t eat it. The butcher will come to collect the heads after the processing.” Their life expectancy, because of this work, is only about 40 to 45 years, she adds.

In the series Thadani has looked at discrimination from different angles—from the labour economy to sexual slavery.  “Whatever is considered as taboo, is assigned to them,” she says. 

If there’s one thing that has stood out for Thadani during the process of shooting this photo series, it’s the contrast between belief and practice. Discrimination is practiced against the Dalit communities, but in situations such as that of Joginis, it is relaxed to suit the upper castes, she explains.

Joginis are a subset of Mala, the largest Dalit community in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Girls from the community, sometimes those as young as five, are married to the village deity and referred to as a ‘goddess’. “On one hand, they are ostracised and limited to the outskirts of the village. But it’s also not considered wrong to have sex with them when convenient,” Thadani says, pointing out the irony.

Joginis of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh
(Asha Thadani)

Through the exhibition, Thadani aims to make people think about the prejudices that they hold and how caste manifests in their lives. She hopes the photography exhibition starts conversations on caste, power hierarchies, and the discrimination against different communities.

Thadani is currently working on documenting ten more Dalit communities as part of this project. 

The ongoing exhibition, Broken, be on display at the India Habitat Centre, Delhi till 7 January. 

I recently spoke with Matt Barker, the CEO and founder of global marketplace MPB, a world-leading online platform for buying and selling used photography gear. Barker offered some incredibly insightful advice on how to navigate the growing recommerce market of secondhand goods as we enter 2024.

MPB has released a report on The Psychology of Recommerce, along with Retail Economics, which uncovered that a large 71% of consumers in 2023 had bought or sold used products. This change in consumer motivations is down to plenty of factors, as the report delves into, but the high price of new flagship camera models has been called into question.

The price of new camera bodies and lenses has more than doubled over the last few years, and this fancy new kit is becoming unaffordable and inaccessible to a large portion of non-professional photographers (myself included), forcing creatives to shop and swap for used gear instead of brand new products. 

If you aren’t familiar with MPB’s platform, now is a good time to get acquainted. It offers a user-friendly way to shop online for used photography and videography gear, with transparency around the item’s exact condition and history. You can also receive a speedy quote for selling your tech to MPB, and the shipping process is straightforward too (believe me, I’ve used it). 

Part two of my conversation with Barker on secondhand cameras and the recommerce market (short for reverse commerce), has more of a photographic focus rather than picking apart the report, but it’s important to understand where the photography industry is heading, now that the barriers to entry for buying and selling pre-owned photo equipment have significantly decreased.
I asked Barker: 

And I would say the main thing that we see, and it’s something that people should be conscious of, is lenses that have optical issues as a result of moisture or fungus. Because if you store your lenses in a humid environment, or a damp environment in any sense, that can be a problem.

And you see it more as you get into hotter climates like Southern Europe, because we operate all across the UK. So we see it a little bit more in the warmer climates. And it’s just something for people to be conscious of because it’s the only thing that can be an issue with lenses over time. It’s a fixable thing, and we can get lenses clean, but if people have stored their lenses in a slightly damp environment then this will cause a bit of fungus.

Keep your kit dry, but not too warm. It’s really important, and then they’ll last forever. And with the film camera market especially, the analogue market, that’s super important because we’re kind of seeing a lot of that stuff fall out the ecosystem, which is a shame, just because it was stored badly.

Vicky Kaushal and Katrina Kaif, a beloved celebrity couple, welcomed the New Year together on a cozy vacation in Rajasthan. The duo frequently expresses their affection for each other on social media, often treating their followers to delightful banter. In a recent post, Vicky shared a shot of himself savoring coffee during their holiday, revealing that the skilled photographer behind the camera was none other than Katrina.

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Katrina Kaif captures Vicky Kaushal enjoying coffee on their New Year vacation

On Tuesday, January 2, Vicky Kaushal took to Instagram and posted a picture of himself seated in an armchair, donning a gray-colored hoodie and a cowboy hat. He was captured in the moment, enjoying coffee from a white mug.

In the caption, Vicky shared an interesting tidbit using emojis. With the cowboy hat face emoji and a coffee emoji, he included a camera emoji, a queen emoji, and a red heart emoticon, subtly revealing that the photograph was taken by his ‘queen,’ Katrina Kaif.

Have a look!

Fan reactions to Vicky Kaushal’s picture clicked by Katrina Kaif

Fans immediately flooded the comments section with love and appreciation for the couple, along with praise for Katrina’s photography skills. One fan teased, “The caption…ehem ehem,” while another wrote, “Nice pic clicked by your queen of hearts/wife @katrinakaif.” A comment read, “Your (queen) is an amazing photographer!” A fan requested, “Some more from this vacation plss.”

Previously, Katrina Kaif offered a sneak peek into their New Year festivities in Rajasthan. In a series of captivating images, Katrina wore a stunning white dress adorned with floral prints, while Vicky chose a cozy black sweater. The post featured endearing selfies of the couple and a picturesque scene of a nighttime bonfire accompanied by folk music.

A particularly touching moment was encapsulated in an image beneath the sky, where they shared a heartfelt embrace with their backs turned to the camera. Accompanying the visuals, Katrina’s caption conveyed warm wishes: “Wishing Peace of mind , health , happiness and love for everyone in 2024 …..” 

Meanwhile, Vicky expressed his festive wishes, stating, “Love, light, happiness… Happy 2024 everyone!” 

ALSO READ: EXCLUSIVE: Katrina Kaif opens up on being ‘more fearless’ early in her career; discusses surprising audience

From the history of Black women photographers in Britain to discontent German teens and liberating nudes in an Eden-like garden, we take a look through some of next year’s diverse and hotly-anticipated photo books…

In today’s world of virtual reality, with social media platforms taking centre stage, people like to share their lives with others via photographs, videos, etc. While it has become pretty easy to click good pictures thanks to the advanced smartphone cameras, there’s always room for improvement. And precisely for that, we have come across a video in which a professional is sharing car interior photography tips.

Kevin McCauley, a professional car photographer, published this video on his YouTube channel Capturing the Machine. In the clip, he talks about various things that one should keep in mind when doing car interior photography. For example, location, camera, background, etc.

Some of the car interior photography tips that McCauley shares include picking the best spot, no distractions in the background, no direct sunlight, etc. He also tells us about the different factors to keep in mind during car interior photography like door count, body style, interior colour, material usage, and so on.

So, whether you are trying to take pictures of your car’s interior for social media or trying to take up this as a hobby or passion or profession, do check out McCauley’s video to learn more.

In 2008, I spent a few days with Josef Koudelka in Prague, the city he had immortalised in photographs 40 years previously as Russian tanks rolled into its streets on the evening of 20 August 1968. He had only recently returned to his homeland, and was about to be belatedly honoured with an exhibition of his photographs from that pivotal moment, a mere fraction of the 5,000 he shot in the first week of the invasion.

It was the first time they had been shown there and, unsurprisingly, he was in a reflective mood. “For a long time no one here was interested in remembering,” he told me, “but now I think they start to remember again.”

For a long time, Koudelka, who is 85, also seemed to have little interest in remembering – at least publicly – the remarkable adventure of his own life as a photographer. Two years after the Russian invasion, he left Czechoslovakia and began an extended exile during which he became a nomad of sorts, travelling constantly. His vagabond life became the stuff of legend, particularly among his fellow members of the Magnum photo agency: Koudelka drank slivovitz (a fearsome Czech plum brandy) for breakfast; he slept beneath a desk in Magnum’s office in Paris, or on the floors of friends: he would suddenly disappear for months at a time with his sleeping bag and a rucksack containing a change of clothes, his camera and as many canisters of film as he could carry.

His close friend and fellow photographer Elliott Erwitt described Koudelka to me as “an eccentric, who thinks differently and sees the world differently”, before adding, revealingly, that he was an artist who was “utterly aware of his own legend and his legacy”.

Melissa Harris’s visual biography, intriguingly titled Next, was written with his cooperation, and is a thorough and informative overview of his life and work. Rich in personal ephemera – family portraits, snapshots and glimpses of his many journals – it traces his trajectory from Boskovice, a small town in Moravia, where he had dreams of becoming an engineer, to his status as one of the world’s most revered photographers. Koudelka emerges as a fiercely single-minded individual, whose freedom is synonymous with constant movement. “Never stay for a long time in one place,” he wrote in a diary from the early 1970s. “When you stop somewhere… things start to stick. When you go from one place to another, you are cleaning yourself.”

Having fled his homeland, Koudelka seems to have instinctively known that he would never be at home elsewhere. The Roma people he lived among and photographed for his first great book, Gypsies (1975), called him the “romantico clandestino”. His relentless restlessness, which even they considered extreme, informed his choice of early subject matter: Gypsies was followed by another book titled Exiles. In both, his eye for haunting human tableaux and stark, unforgiving landscapes was acute, no more so than in his image Slovakia (Jarabina) (1963), in which a handcuffed young Romani man stands on a hill, with a gaggle of villagers and handful of policemen in the background.

When it was exhibited in a group show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1973, the extended caption incorrectly described it as the moment in which the young man was being taken away to be executed for murder. In fact, Koudelka photographed him when he had been taken back to the scene of the crime by the local police, who were trying to accurately reconstruct the moment. When Koudelka returned to the Slovakian village more than 20 years later, he tells Harris, he somehow managed to track down the man and show him the photograph. “He looked at me,” Koudelka recalled. “He put his arms around me and with great happiness, he said: ‘It’s me! It’s me! It’s me!’”

That particular photograph, even more so than Koudelka’s other haunting images of isolated Roma communities, their rituals and celebrations, is complex in its atmospheric rendering of isolation and belonging. It exemplifies one of the underlying themes of Harris’s book, and of Koudelka’s classic photographs: the sense that, for all his lone wanderings, he is the very opposite of the detached observer. Instead, he is an image-maker whose identification with, and empathy for, his subjects underpins his immersive approach and produces photographs that often possess a kind of grainy romantic realism.

Harris also tracks Koudelka’s various romantic relationships, which were often intense and fleeting, and sketches his relationships with his three children, one of whom, Rebecca, he met for the first time in 2000, almost 30 years after she was born. The abiding sense is of a man whose dedication to his work, and innate wanderlust, precluded the possibility of long-term commitment. “No one can ever help you,” he wrote in one of his journals. “It’s you who has to help yourself.” Alone, and on the move, he seems to have experienced his most rewarding interactions and somehow formed his most enduring friendships. Not so much an eccentric, then, more, as Harris’s book attests, an enigma. His thousands of photographs, he tells her, are “proof that you were alive. That it was not just a dream.”

So 2024 is here, and I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. Why have I been so excited, you may ask? It’s because 2024 is an Olympic year, which is always a big deal for the camera world, and for the wider technology world. Olympic and World Cup years tend to herald the largest leaps in camera specs and features, as well as screen technology, because the games are the perfect opportunity for brands to show off what their kit is capable of.

Some of the most significant camera releases in terms of pushing technological boundaries have been released in the run-up to – or in the year of – global sporting events, including: the Nikon D3 (2008); the Nikon D4 and the Canon EOS-1D X (2012); the Canon EOS-1D X II and the Nikon D5 (2016); the Canon EOS R (2018); the Fujifilm X-T4 (2020); and the Sony A1 (2021).

This year, the digital camera world welcomes the headline-grabbing Sony A9 III, the world’s first hybrid full-frame stacked CMOS camera (that’s a lot of qualifiers) to feature global shutter technology. But what is a global shutter, and why does Sony and its many fans believe that this development is a ‘game changer’? Will we see a trend of global shutter cameras coming in 2024 and beyond? Let’s take a quick scan ahead.

Global warming?

A global shutter sensor is capable of reading all the pixels in its array at the same time. This eliminates visual imperfections such as the rolling shutter or jello effect from video. It also prevents distortion, banding and LED / light flicker from ruining shots of fast-moving action, crucially helping to deliver better images while capturing sports events. 

This development going mainstream means flash sync speeds beyond anything that was previously capable; burst rates with full autofocus that defy logic; and no more pesky banding lines when you capture images indoors with flickering lights.

But global shutter technology isn’t new: many high-end cinema cameras use global shutters already. In fact, the first ‘global shutter’ sensors were introduced by Kodak in the Seventies; they were charged-couple device (CCD) sensors. Despite their technological advantages, CCD sensors struggled to compete with the more common CMOS sensors due to cost and availability.

In 2018, Panasonic announced the world’s first global shutter CMOS sensor. Its Organic-Photoconductive-Film (OPF) CMOS Image Sensor could deliver 8K resolution (36MP) with a maximum frame rate of 60fps and even had an electronically controlled variable ND-filter system. 

Mind blown? Well, it shouldn’t be. Many of the biggest developments in camera technology are many years in the making. The fact that we’re only seeing global shutter sensor technology coming to hybrid cameras like the Sony A9 III now is a sign that the benefits are starting to outweigh the trade-offs that have to be made to implement it. Some of these include cost, of course, but they also currently see a reduction in dynamic range and noise handling capabilities compared with CMOS sensors at this stage.

However, now that Sony has fired the starting gun and you’re aware that Panasonic is also developing the technology, it’s only a matter of time before global shutters become as ubiquitous as silent shutters have been over the past few years. I can’t wait for Paris 2024 – I love Olympic years, what a time to be a photographer!

Keep up with the Olympians with the best cameras for sports photography along with the best lenses for sports photography.