On June 2, 1994, Rajiv Gupta was at the Delhi airport, waiting for then President Shankar Dayal Sharma to return from a trip to Bulgaria and Romania. When the aircraft touched down, Sharma peered out of the window to see how many people had gathered to receive him. This is the photograph that Gupta captured. Hindustan Times published the picture on its front page, and received almost 1,000 letters to the editor about it. 

Rajiv Gupta’s photo of Shankar Dayal Sharma published in Hindustan Times.

It’s a reminder of what Gupta, a photojournalist for 32 years, describes as the “past glory” of photojournalists, a time when they truly made an impact.

Twenty-five years on, much has changed. In the digital age of journalism, the reporter is a veritable one-man army, using the mobile phone to shoot pictures and videos, and broadcast live while reporting from the ground. This saves media houses money, but it makes a victim — the photojournalist. In recent years, layoffs have become common in the Indian media — and some of the first casualties are photojournalists and video journalists.

In the past year alone, the news channel Tiranga TV, and the websites News Central 24×7 and DailyO have closed down while the newspaper DNA has shut down its print editions. According to a source at News18, the network laid off 80 video journalists in 2010. A few months ago, it laid off another 60-70 journalists, the majority of them photojournalists and video journalists. Industry insiders told Newslaundry this issue has been in the making for years now.

But exactly how bad is the state of photojournalism in India right now? Newslaundry contacted several veteran photojournalists to find out. Here are their stories.

Rajiv Gupta

Gupta, who is currently chief visual director at News18, started his career in 1987 with The Patriot. According to him, the decline in the number of photojournalists today stems from the emergence of news agencies like PTI and UNI, which distribute photographs to news organisations at cheap rates.

“In our time, there were no photo agencies, their work was limited to text copies,” says Gupta. “Later, as they moved into photojournalism, PTI provided Associated Press photos and UNI did the same with Reuters. They began charging newspapers about ₹30,000-50,000 a month for pictures from around the world, not just India. This killed the profession of photojournalism.”

Subhash Roy 

Roy, a freelance photojournalist with 20 years of experience working for publications such as Hindustan Times, The Times of India and The Indian Express, says, “News organisations now don’t look for exclusivity, they are fine with agency photos at a cheap rate. They don’t understand that news agencies circulate the same pictures to all media houses, so they’re ready to compromise on quality.”

Vijay Pandey

Considered one of the most skilled photojournalists of his time, Pandey started his career in 2001 in Meerut with the Hindi newspaper Amar Ujala. In 2007, he joined Tehelka as the photo editor. It was “the golden period” of photojournalism, he says. 

“At that time, a photojournalist could pitch a story. If the story was good enough, it would get approved. I hardly see that anymore,” Pandey says. “But then again, that was the time of ground reports. Today, every media house is dependent on international organisations for a good picture.” 

In his time, he recalls, Tehelka had five photojournalists on its staff. Today, it has none. 

In 2015, Pandey joined Outlook, part of a team of five or six photojournalists, now reduced to three. He says he resigned in 2018 because Outlook stopped commissioning ground reports from its photojournalists. “We had no other option,” he points out. “The organisation stopped doing field reports so we had nothing to do. Therefore, I had to leave. All I could go was go to Jantar Mantar and cover protests.” 

Pandey subsequently joined Wise but quit soon after for the same reason. He currently works as a freelancer. “There are no jobs, anything available now [in India] pays only ₹30,000-50,000. Working as a freelancer for an international brand pays me $300-600 per month for two or three stories.”

Naresh Sharma

Currently a freelance photojournalist, Sharma’s first job was with The Indian Express in 1997. He says mobile phone cameras cannot capture photos the way a digital single-lens camera can. He points out that reporters often capture mobile phone photos in automatic mode since they have very little knowledge of the technical aspects of photography — that’s not their job, after all. 

Sharma worked at The Times of India from 2006 to 2009. There, he recalls, his editor would call every story a “product”. He was then moved to Metro Now, a joint venture between The Times of India and Hindustan Times, but was told to resign in 2009 when Metro Now shut down.

In 2010, he moved to Firstpost as a freelance photojournalist before joining full-time four years later. He says he wasn’t getting enough work, despite drawing a salary. “For a photojournalist, salary is not everything. Hence, I resigned.”

Neeraj Priyadarshi

In contrast to his peers, Neeraj Priyadarshi, who has worked as a photojournalist with The Indian Express for 20 years, thinks there’s plenty of scope for the profession.

“Even today, when there are opinions against photojournalism, especially in terms of its viability owing to technology and its feasibility, I see huge numbers of young people studying photojournalism and taking it up as a full-time profession,” Priyadarshi says. “Though the market is bad, there’s a new phenomenon of photojournalists using a freelance and personal approach to produce exemplary work, rather than looking for opportunities in traditional news outlets.”

With technological innovations in visual science, Priyadarshi says, the scope and outreach of the medium has tripled. “While earlier there was only newsprint as a major outlet, now there’s the Web, social media, even multimedia. The output required from a professional photojournalist has changed drastically. One is expected to photograph, videograph, edit and even produce a whole set of the assignment. These expectations have improved chances for professionals and kept standards high.” 

In India’s own backyard, he names young photojournalists such as Chandan Khanna, Saumya Khandelwal and Tashi Tobgyal who have “treaded on the things mentioned above”, and are doing well. 

Priyadarshi says the Express has kept him going, especially its high standards and “large family environment”. “There is no newsroom that can match the madness and magic of The Indian Express,” he says. He adds that when he started out with the newspaper, there were 40 photojournalists on payroll. Today, it has about 30. 

Sohail Akhtar

Akhtar’s involvement in photojournalism is more academic than professional: he’s an assistant professor at Jamia Millia Islamia. While he doesn’t believe photojournalism will ever die, he thinks the digital era requires a journalist to “know everything”. For this, his college runs a course on convergent journalism where a student writes a story, uploads it on the Internet, and designs it. This includes digital photography. 

As Akhtar points out, “The days of specialisation are over. Now a student who aspires to become a journalism needs to learn the whole craft. We teach a photojournalism course but that doesn’t mean a student will become a photojournalist…We aim to produce journalists who can do a ‘full package’ story.”

Praveen Jain

Jain is part of the tribe of India’s most renowned photojournalists. Currently with The Print, he previously worked with The Indian Express for 23 years as its national photo editor. 

Jain cites two reasons for the decline of photojournalism: the change in preferences of media organisations and the community of photojournalists. He says the sort of “unity” they had before is no longer there. He points out how reporters banded together in protest when Nirmala Sitharaman barred their entry into the finance ministry building. “None of that sort of energy is there among photojournalists.”

On how changing politics has changed attitudes towards the media, Jain says, “There was a time when the visual media was very powerful. We were allowed inside the president’s and prime minister’s houses, even the South Block. It was strong during the governments of PV Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee and even during HD Deve Gowda and Chandra Shekhar.” 

It was during Manmohan Singh’s tenure, he recalls, that the establishment began curtailing the freedom of photojournalists. “Today, we aren’t even allowed inside the prime minister’s house or the South Block,” he points out. “Only a few places in Rashtrapati Bhavan are accessible to us.” 

Even when former President Pranab Mukherjee received the Bharat Ratna in August this year, he says, the media was not allowed inside Rashtrapati Bhavan — the first time ever in India for such a big event. 

Similarly, during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Chennai, he applied to get accreditation from the Press Information Bureau. It was approved. However, Jain received an advisory which said only “official media” was allowed to cover the event — the prime minister’s team of photographers and a few government media agencies. His approval was rejected. 

Newslaundry also spoke to a reporter at The Print, Simran Sirur, who worked with Jain on a story. “As a reporter, it was very comfortable to have a photographer with me to capture the story,” she says. “It becomes difficult for a reporter to suddenly take out a phone in the middle of an interview or conversation. It completely ruins whatever information you are trying to get from that conversation and is disrespectful to the person you are speaking with.” 

Having a photojournalist along, she says, “adds an extra pair of eyes” to a story to capture its expression.