<b><font color ='black'>JUST SHOOT THEM</font></b>

Camcorders and camera phones in hand, people are constantly capturing life in mp4 and 3gp files. As everything from the first footsteps to funeral rites becomes fodder for the camera-friendly masses, an extraordinary visual culture is on the rise
We were word people, we stocked stationery and wrote letters, and then emailed and texted—about birthdays and funerals, about neighbours, dogs and holidays, about having a fruit tart. But the ritual is something else now. It is Virraj Sorhvi sitting on the edge of bed no. 4112 of a Delhi hospital and switching on the camera of his mobile phone. As a friend takes it and holds it with an unsteady hand, 24-year-old Sorrhvi, who has been almost confined to the bed since an accident two years ago, turns actor. 00:08: With a toothy smile, Sorrhvi reaches out, the yellow hospital band clearly visible on his right wrist, for a fruit tart from the Imperial Hotel. 1:05: He puts a slice of pear in his mouth, leans back as a shock of hair tumbles onto his forehead—and closes his eyes in bliss. The jerky, 3:49-minute video is not meant to be art; it is Sorrhvi’s way of letting the world into the ward and flinging himself off the sickbed into pixels for YouTube.

A new visual culture is on the rise. Everywhere, everyone rich enough to afford a camcorder or the cheaper camera phone is capturing life in mp4 and 3gp files. If once Kodak moments were those for which you dressed up and posed and which you stowed away in albums like mothballed memories, now there is an avalanche of images, continually streaming, screaming to be noticed on Facebook and Flickr, to be browsed in the folders of phones, laptops and blogs. Such a visual archive has never before been constructed. Such a democratisation of the visual medium probably has not happened since the Ice Age art when cavemen with blood and bat guano sat by boulders and painted antelopes and dancing women.

We don’t search for droppings now; we just reach for a cell phone or a camcorder. A 2-megapixel camera on his Nokia N72 is enough for Devesh Singh. The 38-year-old freelance tour guide has turned his obsession of taking videos into an obstinate daily ritual. If he is not focusing his phone on his eight- and five-year-old boys playing or fighting, he makes a 60-second self-portrait or even record a scene on Animal Planet. He belongs to the new tribe that is not content consuming visuals of Shah Rukh Khan or Shakira or saas-bahu; they create their own Bollywood. Like the 22-year-old engineer Rishabh Kale or the 19-year-old student Ritika Kochhar who keep the camera phone ready because they “don’t want to miss the moment”. Like 20-something Avinash Kumar whose random videos adds to the gigs of his Delhi band B.L.O.T, making it an aural-visual experience. Like the 30-something Indu who stood by a Kathakali stage, one purple night in Kerala, with her camera trained on a green-masked Nala. Far away in Mumbai, the kilobytes would do to her what madeleine did to Proust. As Parul Dave Mukherjee, dean of the School of Art and Aesthetics, JNU, says, “It is the emergence of a new visual-centric culture, with new ways of seeing and interpreting the world.”

... contd.

Ads By Google

Message*	Maximum characters allowed

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*

TERMS OF USE:
The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).

I agree to the terms of use.