On being a photographer...

"Oh, you are a photojournalist? What does that mean?" The question was shot across the wedding banquet table as an old classmate joined the horde of curious people who have asked the same question. My answer has always been: "just a photographer for a newspaper". Unconvinced, he asked again: "So, what are the career prospects?" Tough question, as I have never thought about that question myself! So I conjured up terms like "senior photojournalist" and "photo editor". But ultimately, I ended off by giving him an analogy. "You see, photographers are like actors,” I said. “Actors who have been acting for 30 years or who have won awards are still known as just actors. Not senior actors or whatever. So, a photographer will always just be a photographer." I don't think he was convinced but I was glad that the conversation moved on to the whereabouts of old classmates. It was a relief, as such conversations tend to move towards suggestions that I become a wedding photographer ("can earn big money, you know?") or a commercial one. You can't blame the people, as their first contact with a photographer is most likely to be a wedding or commercial photographer. And some of these professional photographers are better salespeople than your friendly financial advisors, giving the perception that photographers are super well-off. Trust me, there are many struggling professional photographers out there as well. But what does it mean to be a photographer? During a recent Sony workshop** in Bali that I attended, the legendary Magnum photographer Abbas said: "The photographer is not important. He (or she) just takes pictures." For someone of Abbas' stature to say those words, it was an awakening. Yes, a photographer just takes pictures; he or she doesn't build a roof over people's heads or create a cure for cancers. However, it is the pictures that are important. Pictures have the power to evoke responses from the masses that inspire, better the human condition and change the course of history. Seriously, it doesn't matter who takes the pictures. As I looked at some of my workshop mates' pictures, I was humbled by the amazing photographs they took. Many of them are what others would call "serious amateurs" or "hobbyists". But fundamentally, they are no different from me as a photographer, other than I earn a living as one. These days, everyone can be a photographer with their mobile phones and compact digital cameras. But what they might not understand is that every photograph they take is a snippet of history, reality and time. As social critic Susan Sontag wrote in her 1977 seminal work "On Photography", "… images are indeed able to usurp reality because first of all a photograph is not only an image, an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real". Thus, being a photographer means you are a recorder of "a thin slice of space as well as time" - Sontag's description of a photograph. And this might just be the answer I will give the next time when I am asked what I do for a living. **Check out the photos I took during the workshop at TODAYonline Gallery, click on "In Bali with Magnum" banner to see the album!