Every time I walk past the Soudha I come across the photographers there looking for customers. Mr Jagadeesh has been working here for the last three decades now and his amble gets slower every year. Born in 1966 he started out renting VCR/CDs which went out of fashion in the late 90s. Over time he made friends with the photographers and figured this could be a steady source of income. After 2005 though, it has been a real struggle with the arrival of smartphones. People offend him saying they have better cameras than his when he offers his printed photo services.
A former photographer at the Vidhana Soudha tells me how he would print upwards of 500 prints a day back in the nineties. “People would come for protests all the way from North Karnataka. The 80s and 90s saw a lot of protests under the Congress government and people wanted their pictures taken with the MLAs. Each photographer had a runner who would take the roll after it completed 24 exposures to run to the lab for prints. We would have to tell our customers to go to Cubbon for a stroll and come back for their prints in time.”
“How did you learn to use the camera?”, I asked the trio of Sekhar, Krishnappa and Mr. Nanjegowda. “ಎಲ್ಲಾರು L ಬೋರ್ಡ್ ಇಂದಾನೆ ಶುರು ಮಾಡಿದ್ದು. We learnt a few settings from others and gained experience along the way”, remarked Mr Nanjegowda. I managed to rescue one sleeve of negatives from Mr. Sekhar. Everyone else had lost their work though. Either when moving house or because they were thrown away due to lack of space to store them.
“There were over 60 of us at one time before the metal barriers came up. That happened just after 26/11. And then we were no longer allowed to photograph on the lawns" says Chandrasekhar joining the group. Whether it is sunny or raining, clad in checkered shirts, a dusty sleeve of prints tucked under arms and a handkerchief to protect the prized possession of their occupation - the camera - nine photographers roam the paved pathways even today.
They might just be the last photographers at the Vidhana Soudha. They might not be photographers of acclaim but they deserve a note in the history of photography in this city.
