Purvi: Can you talk about your relationship with the people you photograph? How do you decide what and who to document?

Palani: I always look at people. When a place is affected by an environmental issue, I look for the people who occupy or depend on that place. Often, it is the marginalised people who are affected, as they are the ones who use the land directly. Without land, it is very hard for them to live their lives. So I aim to bring out their voices through my photos.

Take my photo series on Govindamma for example, it is about a woman who lives near the river. The river is a very important part of her community’s life. Every time the river is affected, the people there are affected. The people are mostly from tribal communities. While anybody with a lot of money and resources can easily move out, the rest have to stay back, as they depend on the land; they use it every day.

How do you develop a relationship with the people you document?

Palani: Like I said, for me it is all about the people. I need to live their lives first, I need to gain their trust. I need to get a sense of their lives; witness it from their own eyes. To do this, I need to go there, I need to sit with them, and talk to them. I like to ask them about their life stories. Where they come from, what they do for a living. Today I met two children while shooting. They told me that they are working very hard on their studies. So I stopped taking photographs, and asked them about their preparation. I gave them some advice and I told them to try to study more. So for me, taking photographs is only part of the process, connecting with people is also part of it.  Otherwise I can’t make any stories about them.

Mostly my stories are based on working people and working classes. When a person spends all their time working, they are not spending any time with themselves. My mother had a restless life too. She had no breathing space. She had only sleepless nights. When I was younger, I also worked in similar environments. I worked at a hotel, I worked at a fast food restaurant, I worked with my mother cutting fish. I feel that people are working very hard all the time. Everywhere I go, I sense that. So I know how to connect with working people easily.

Right now I am working on a story about a nomadic tribe that lives on the banks of a river in Tamil Nadu. They don’t have any electricity. On the other side of the same river, there is a community with access to water and electricity. There is a pipeline that cuts the water supply to the nomadic tribe. Currently I am staying at one of their homes to shoot this project.

The tribe has also been fighting for a community certificate for years, which they were finally able to acquire last year. The certificate has a lot of power. Many people couldn’t study because they didn’t have the certificate. It’s important that I highlight that, to bring out their reality.

How has this process changed you as a person, if at all?

In the beginning I used to make a lot of photo-stories about people who carry out manual scavenging. I also worked on a documentary about it called Kakkoos. I remember, many people would ask me a lot of absurd questions and doubts about manual scavenging, and I would get angry. But after following the story for many years, I realised I needed to talk to these people and have more discussions about these topics. Anger is not useful.You need to have a conversation about political issues. So now I try to connect with people everywhere. 

In the beginning when I was shooting photographs of manual scavengers, I would photograph them inside the manhole, and would shoot their faces also. After I went there multiple times,  had many meetings with them, and shared so many experiences with them, I stopped showing their faces. Now when I go to shoot, I stick to that and don’t show people’s faces. I find that it can take away the dignity of people. So over the years I’ve tried to correct many things in myself and my photography, based on my belief that I needed to show people to the world with proper dignity.

I don’t think of myself as a big photographer who needs to make a powerful photograph. No, I tell myself: you need to show the reality. And you need to show it in the proper way. 

I saw your work with Vyasai Thorzhangal (a voluntary organisation that works for the social upliftment of youth in Vyasarpadi, Chennai). The exhibition was very much about letting people tell their own stories, and documenting the things around them. What is the broader goal with that? 

Right now I’m teaching a lot of workshops to kids who belong to marginalised communities. I have 10-15 students under me, and they are all working very hard. Paying back to the people has become very important to me. While teaching and planning my workshops, I follow Ambedkar’s and Periyar’s ideologies of working towards equality. 

Think about how many photographers you know from dalit or tribal communities. How many of them are represented in mainstream media? It’s countable. So, I want to break through that by creating more photographers, whether they are from the Muslim community, the Tribal community, or the Dalit community. 

The collaboration with Vyasai Thozhargal was an exhibition called “Our Streets, Our Stories.” We made history with it. We put the exhibition in a slum area, so that many people could come to the slum and look at the pictures for free. Usually exhibitions have proper halls and good lighting. We had none of these things; we put up all the pictures on the walls of buildings, along the roads, and in the living and working spaces of the people. 

I don’t think I had seen anything like this before in Chennai, especially North Chennai. Many people think of North Chennai as full of criminals; they usually aren’t shown in the best light. I saw the workshop as a way for students to break many of these stigmas. So currently we are giving them a lot more opportunities through workshops and photography to do this. 

Today, when I went out to shoot photos for the project on this tribe, I met a guy who wanted my help with shooting. So I stopped my own shooting, and tried to help out. Ultimately, he knows the people, he knows how they are living. For me, this is the first time I am interacting with them. So I don’t know them as well as he does. While shooting, I would probably miss things that he would notice. So my goal is to train people like him– starting with giving them a camera and teaching them the proper way. 

Maybe this guy could be the first photographer from this nomadic tribe. It’s a big deal. 

I don’t necessarily see this as an  achievement, however. As I said, it is more of a means to pay back to my people. I am a photographer because of my people’s pain. Every photograph is because of someone else’s life. So I feel I have to pay back to society. 

I try to tell my students to have similar goals as well. I tell them that if you have been given a chance, you should give it to someone else too. If you have been given a camera, after you use it, it should not be sitting in a suitcase. Pass it on to someone else. 

It seems like there’s a vibrant culture of Ambedkarite photographers in Chennai and Tamil Nadu at large. More than other states. Why do you think that is? 

Pa Ranjith is making a lot of films with a strong Ambedkarite push, and after him, many other filmmakers, like Mari Selvaraj, have started making films based on Ambedkarism. It’s nice to see.

When I was a child, people in my village weren’t too aware of Ambedkar or Periyar. I was also discriminated against, but I didn’t know why that was happening. It was only when I started taking photos in a political way, that I started realising the things that had happened in my life. 

After I grew up I started reading Ambedkar and Periyar. Now there is a lot of Ambedkar and Periyar going around on social media, but we need to create a discussion around these things so that we can bring others to the same ideology, that is to go for equality. 

Currently many Dalit activists and photographers are coming up on social media. It is a good way for them to express their voices. People are now talking about journalism as a voice for voiceless people.

When did you come into Ambedkarism?

When I was working on Kakoos. Before that, I didn’t know how sanitation workers were living, or that many manual scavengers die in manholes. During the filming, I was asking myself: Who is being discriminated against? How do I portray what is real? How do I bring out the person affected by this situation? These concerns are rooted in Ambedkarite and Periyarist ideology. That’s when their work really resonated with me. They also worked for the people, they dedicated their life to the people.They didn’t think about their own lives. Maybe I can do even 1% of that for society. 

A week after Kakoos came out, four manual scavengers died in a manhole in Karur. When the news came out, I went there to shoot, and am still working on that story to this day. 

If someone dies in the manhole, a child loses his father, his wife loses her husband, his parents lose a son. So it’s huge. But it still happens. Nobody cares about it. Their life kind of sits between life or death, and they face this everyday. 

After working on the documentary and my photos, I got some money, I got proper lights. I am a photographer now and I get to speak to you for an interview, but still nothing has changed in terms of the lives of manual scavengers or discriminated people. 

I feel guilty and I feel pain. I ask myself why I do this if nothing is going to change? I cry a lot. Everytime I cry I think of Ambedkar. That’s why we need Ambedkar, that’s why we need Periyar. 

Do you hope for some change to happen through your work?

I like to teach. During my school days, my teachers asked me what I wanted to become when I grew up. I told them I was going to be a teacher. 

I don’t know about myself, but I know that my students are going to change things. Really going to change things.That’s why I need to encourage and teach as many of them as I can. They will tell their own stories. I’m not  going to tell their stories. It’s going to be powerful.