Seven wonders of the People's Photographers Collective

“These exhibitions inside AC rooms that claim to represent marginalised communities are not welcoming of the people their art speaks about. I once went to an art exhibition in Delhi as a course requirement. There were these photographs, sculptures and paintings in that hall that were about deprived people, but the whole place had such an elitist feel. I felt so distant there,” 22-year-old Hairunisha's voice is earnest.

“How do you think a person from an already excluded community would feel, if at all one were to land up there? I don’t think she would see it as a place where she belongs. If I ever do an exhibition, I will do it differently. Not just photographs placed on the walls and someone talking about them. I would bring real people to the floor where they could engage with others. And connect the exhibition place to the landscape that the photos depict.” Her thoughts are racing. Hairunisha K. has just 20 minutes to spare before she returns to a campus event that she is anchoring.

Pursuing a master’s in mass communication at Jamia Millia Islamia, a university in New Delhi, Hairunisha is a first-generation learner from a Muslim family in a North Chennai neighbourhood. “I am the first from there to come this far to study. Women in our community are encouraged to stay at home and not go for graduation. Once I reached 18, the pressure on me to get married started. But I ran away. Photography has shown me that there is a bigger world outside,” she says.

A world that her sister Noor Nisha K. also dreams of conquering. “It was during Covid when the schools were shut and I was looking for some time-pass that I joined Palani anna’s photography workshop,” recalls the 20-year-old. “It was the first time that I saw and touched a DSLR camera! And only after seeing my work displayed in the Reframing North Chennai exhibition, that I began thinking of photography as a full-time profession. Till then I thought I would be a fashion designer,” she says with a giggle.

Photography as a way to freedom. That’s how Noor Nisha saw and still sees it. Not in the sense of self-liberation but as a way to connect with the world around, to give back to it, to help change its perception. “Not many institutes in India teach the subject progressively. I want to go out and study. During my childhood I used to think my house is my limit, now I am in a limitless world with photography. This is the tool to explore the world with, and to learn new things.”

The path, however, has been far from smooth. Their mother had to work really hard to ensure the girls’ education after their father died in 2013. For years their mother worked long hours, sacrificing all the time she could have spent with the children, and ensured that the girls got the education they deserved.

Soon after graduating with a BVoc in digital journalism, Noor applied for photography programmes in London and even got accepted in 10 places, but failed to secure a scholarship. “I will keep trying and until then work as a photographer with the collective. Doing projects I enjoy. The latest one I am involved in also has Hairunisha and Suba working with me,” she says.

SubaGomathi M, 26, is from Sankarankovil village in Tenkasi district. “I come from a rural background. My father has a shop in the village. My mother is a homemaker. Neither people in the village nor my parents have had much exposure to journalism or photography,” she says. The youngest among three siblings, she knows her mind and has the determination to follow it, Suba asserts proudly.

“The first time I told my parents I wanted to do journalism, they were unhappy. ‘Don’t be one of those women who stand on the road and take photographs. We don’t like them,’ they said. They insisted I apply for business administration courses.” Suba did as directed. But amidst all the other BBA applications, she quietly slipped in one for a journalism course. Suba got a seat in two colleges – for BBA in one and for BA in journalism in another. Her parents then relented. “And you know why? Because the journalism course was offered in an all-women’s college. Others were co-ed!” She speaks with a sense of amusement. And from there on there was no stopping her.

A master’s in journalism saw her find jobs in the mainstream media. But everywhere her parents’ questions followed her. And more often, her brother or a male relative accompanied her on her shoots. But things changed when she joined the People’s Photographers Collective in 2024. Suba’s parents began to see the value of her work. She evolved her own perspective on photography.

Travelling with the collective, Suba has been teaching Adivasi and Dalit students from Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. “Ultimately, I felt I was in the right place. I am finally getting trained to be a documentary photojournalist – the one who stands with the people and becomes a voice of the people. There are no women journalists in my village, and I love teaching young girl children photography.” It was in one of the photography workshops in the Government Model school in Tenkasi that she met Keerthi.

At 16, Keerthi S. is one of the youngest in this group of achievers. A Class 12 student from Mayamankurichi village, in Tenkasi. “After learning photography at the school, my first impression about the field changed. I used to think that photography has to do with big functions and weddings. But now I know that it is not just about capturing happy faces, but also about documenting ordinary people. I don’t have a camera. I go with my phone and photograph my grandmother and her friends labouring in the fields in the village.” Keerthi has just returned from a long day at school, but her voice vibrates with enthusiasm the minute you ask her to talk about photography.

And yet it is not a career option. “I love photography projects, but I want to become a Cargo Officer. Even my father is not happy. He would rather I became an astronaut like Kalpana Chawla. He calls me Keerthi Chawla. But my heart lies in transportation, aviation, cargo management. Just yesterday the list was out, and I have got admission in the Indian Maritime University. I will soon be studying BBA in maritime logistics.”

Her dream of studying marine logistics sits comfortably next to her love for photography. The latter is what she loves doing, she says. She was about eight years old when her father met with an accident. Even after his partial recovery, life has not been the same for him and the family. Her mother has been handling the their small grocery shop business and household responsibilities. When she first took the camera, she recorded the life of her mother. “Behind every success story of a family member, there is someone sacrificing silently. My photography is and will always be a way to honour these silent workers.”

Mukesh would have agreed with Keerthi, if he were listening. K. Mukesh is another young achiever in this group and is from Melmoil village in Vellore district. He too is a 16-year-old completing Class 12 from the Government Model School in Vellore. His journey into photography began by honouring his father, another silent worker. “My father is a quiet man. At home he talks more to my sister than to me. From what I’ve seen, my parents also don’t communicate a lot with each other. If my mother asks my father to do something, he simply does it. That’s all. He doesn’t speak much with anyone in the village either.” That’s what he says in his photo story that he wrote after he followed his father, with camera in hand, to his workplace – a stone quarry.

He speaks shyly, softly, using very few words about his love for photography, respect for his parents, and on his inspiration: Palani anna’s story on his mother that Mukesh’s trainer at the school had got them to read. And, about his feelings towards the lens that gave him a new perspective on his own life, and on that of his father’s. “I want to do photography after I finish school,” he says. “I have been documenting the lives of traditional laundry workers in Vellore. I was inspired by a photography class and the book Oorukku Oru Kudi [One family in every village].”

Mukesh says little and seems conscious of the distance between us, the different languages in which we both communicate. But a look at his photographs makes me realise that Mukesh speaks little by way of words but talks plenty with his photographs. They have become his language.

In Pudukkottai’s Kothamangalam village, Karthikeyan R, 32, has a different problem with language. “I only understood Tamil then. I didn’t have that much understanding in English. That’s why I struggled in college,” he speaks to me in English about the years between 2015 and 2021. He had not got his engineering degree at the end of four years in 2015 because he was unable to clear his exams. The government run Industrial Training Institute (ITI) that offered education in Tamil would not run the course he was interested in since there were no other takers for it. He felt guilty about his father’s taking that loan for him to finish engineering, but he was unable to cope with the English medium engineering education. It was his parents’ pressure that he was working under. After several attempts he got the degree by 2021. And no one had cared about what he was really interested in – cinematography.

“I always wanted to make films, but didn’t know how to go about it. I used to search YouTube for courses, but I had trouble understanding English then, and there was hardly anyone teaching in Tamil. I tried applying at the MGR Government Film and Television Institute and even got a call, but I could not get a seat because of my interview performance and high school marks.

“Then I went to a private college. They asked for 4 lakhs in tuition fees, plus one camera, one laptop, one hard disk and two years’ experience in photography or cinematography. My cousin got me a job in a friend’s studio in Coimbatore. For 4-5 years I covered weddings, festivals and commercial photo shoots. But I realised that what I really wanted was to become a cinematographer. And by then I had wasted those years.” Karthikeyan spent the next two years reading books and watching movies on the internet. He then went back to the private college for admission. But couldn’t afford it as the fees had gone up from 4 to 6 lakhs.

That is when, in 2023, he came across M. Palani Kumar and joined him in teaching to students at the Pudukkottai District Government Model School. For the next three years he travelled with the collective, attending photograpy workshops. In 2026, he published his first photo story in PARI.

“I have completed shooting two short films. One of them for the Indian Film Project [IFP] in 2022. And the other for a competition under Naan Mudhalvan Short Films in Tamil Nadu, which got selected among the top ten entries. I am working on a documentary film on cashew workers.” Karthikeyan shares many things beyond photography and education. About friendships, family, and future in a voice of triumph, resilience and unyielding courage.

“I did not give up. I kept sending Palani anna my photographs on Instagram,” says 25-year-old K. Ravikumar, yet another resilient voice from the Nilgiris forests. An Adivasi from the Betta Kurumba community in Bokkapuram village, he had learnt photography from a colleague in the Nilgiris Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group Federation’s office, practising on an old camera. But once he came to know about Palani Kumar through a friend, Ravi wanted to learn more.

“One day anna finally replied asking me if I was interested in photography. He paid my tickets and got me to Chennai for a photography workshop. That is where I read books, travelled, photographed and learnt about documentary photography. I wanted to tell the story of my community.” Ravi was no longer interested in preparing for government exams. He had found his passion.

But his mother who had single-handedly raised five children after being abandoned by her husband was unhappy. “She wanted me to study for the public service exams. ‘Why are you with your camera all the time? Stop it. Go and study, get a government job. This roaming around and taking photos is not going to get us any money,’ she would yell. But then Palani anna visited with a few of his students one day and spoke to her. That is why she stopped scolding. I did a story documenting her struggles in life. She could not come to my first exhibition but this time she will come with me – this will be her first visit to Chennai.” The happiness in Ravi’s voice is no longer hidden.

“My dream is to continue working for my people. I have seen non-tribals capturing tribal land in exchange for alcohol. They make them work in the fields and give them liquor instead of wages. People think we do not need money, that we are not hardworking people. That we will do anything for a bottle of alcohol. People had even offered me the same when I finished my graduation.” Ravi is the third person from the community to go to college. He has a BA in History.

“I do not like the way our people are portrayed by non-tribals. They have built resorts on Adivasi land and then they use Adivasis as labourers there. We are not slaves. That is not who we are. We work hard to survive every day. There are women in the community like my mother who raise their children by toiling all alone – collecting firewood in a coffee estate, tending other people’s gardens, selling dung cakes. That is why I wrote her story. I want us to write our own stories.” And while he continues to document his people, Ravi, like all the others in the People’s Photographers Collective, prepares the next generation to whom he will be passing the baton. He travels two hours by bus from nearby Masingudi to Ooty to teach photography to young students in the Nilgiris District Government Model School.

Hairunisha, Noor Nisha, SubaGomathi, Keerthi, Mukesh, Karthikeyan, Ravikumar – seven students, seven stories, seven perspectives. All part of one People’s Photographers Collective, united in one struggle for justice, fighting their individual and collective battles with one camera in hand, guided by one mentor – M. Palani Kumar. How proud PARI is to be the home and platform to both his and their work.