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ShareMumbai: Delhi-based photographer Sanjay Sharma's clientele mostly consists of people who are camera-shy, fastidious, and yet strangely unyielding.
Picture this. It starts with the subject refusing to come to Sharma's studio for a shoot. After Sharma relents and goes to their office or residence, he is told to wait, and is informed that at the most, they can spare a few minutes for his lens. Some skip the make-up altogether. Even before Sharma can assemble his apparatus, the subject's cronies instruct him about the angle they want. Within minutes, Sharma is dismissed with a "chalo bahut ho gaya." "That's how it is to shoot a politician," he says.
A photojournalist since 1985, Sharma, 46, has worked extensively with national newspapers. "The thing to remember about shooting a politician is that you are not dealing with a star who can romance your lens and knows exactly what you want. You are shooting a powerful figure who may or may not have the time or the aesthetic sense to understand what is needed to be done," explains Sharma. Lalu Prasad Yadav, for instance, is an eccentric subject.
"Once, he readily allowed me to shoot him while he sat cross-legged cutting vegetables. However, at a rally, despite the presence of media photographers all around, he slapped an IAS officer because he forgot to carry a file along. He didn't care that it would be captured on camera."
Raju Kakade agrees that politicians are a difficult lot to shoot. After a long stint as a newspaper photographer, from 1984 to 1998, Kakade found his calling in political photography, and in designing and printing campaign hoardings. "For hoardings, we need to be careful not to shoot the politician sporting a plastic smile and waving into the skies. It will make the public grimace," he says. His thumb rule is to work only when the politician is at work. When Kakade is not accompanying politicians to their rallies, he sits at his Prabhadevi studio designing and airbrushing images on his Mac.
Kakade shares another interesting secret. "I try to bring out a politician's signature style in the photograph, a personality trait he is best identified with." For instance, he prefers shooting Sharad Pawar with his hands behind his back, and clutching his black spectacle case. "It would be a waste," says Kakade, "if a photographer doesn't tap Bal Thackeray's hand gestures during a rally, or Raj Thackeray's distinctive facial expressions in a photograph."
Sharma has had his moments. He remembers shooting Rajiv Gandhi. He had a keen eye for photography. He owned a Leica and often discussed the shots with me," says Sharma. "LK Advani," Sharma adds, "is one of the most camera-friendly and easy-going politicians to work with. Pramod Mahajan was one of the most arrogant and inflexible. He would turn down every angle I asked him to consider, there was no room for negotiation."
Most political photographers, like Sharma and Kakade, work along party lines. Kakade, in fact, takes on the entire campaign exercise and publicity for a political party. It is a five-year process -- shooting politicians at work, archiving their best photographs over decades, enhancing them, and designing hoardings and websites with slogans. But a political lensman always walks the tightrope, according to Kakade "One slip on my part -- a loose tongue that leaks a campaign strategy -- can cost me a party's goodwill."
