The Photographer of Dhobi Ghat

When Jyotika Jain was signed on for the movie, she had no clue what film photography meant

In the second half of 2008, all that Jyotika Jain had to show for her photography were hundreds of snaps of the special train which ferries women on Mumbai’s suburban network. It was a project she had been working on for two years. After doing a two-year photography course, she had been assisting a photographer, and since there was a commute involved to reach his office, he had suggested that she use it to do a feature on the train itself.

The world of women inside Mumbai’s trains is a strange one. There’s a camaraderie which can only exist between women, but there is also irrational anger, suspicion and sudden violence. Initially, Jyotika had to overcome her shyness even to draw her camera from her bag and not feel threatened. Some would welcome being photographed, some asked her to get off the train, some would pose and she would tell them she didn’t want it that way. In the morning, there would be students with their books out. In the evening, there would be working women returning home. There would be vendors selling bright balloons and all kinds of stuff which she had never seen in any shop outside. There would be fisherwomen; there would be executives. There was an entire system on board with rules; for things like reserving seats or where you need to stand to alight at a particular station. “You know that if you want to get down at Borivali you don’t take a Virar Special because these women will just kill you. Nobody has to teach you the system, but once you start travelling, you become part of it,” she says. There was colour, activity and chaos. Jyotika saw the whole city on the train and she went on shooting it. “Normally, I enjoy looking out of the window; now I was looking in. It’s a world that you are part of inside [the train], but once you get off, it doesn’t exist anymore.”

The project got over, but the photos remained in her hard drive. She had managed to sell the feature to Marie Claire magazine but they were yet to run it. She had had no exhibitions either. She was, for all practical purposes, still an amateur. Even so, when a friend who was part of Dhobi Ghat’s crew told her that its director Kiran Rao was looking for a female photographer, Jyotika had reservations. “I said ‘I have no idea what film photography is,’” she says. “She said, ‘Do it because the locations are so interesting’. I emailed some of my photographs to Kiran Rao and she liked them.”

This was followed by a meeting with Kiran where she was briefed about the movie. “Kiran also told me what a film photographer does, because I had no idea. It would include shooting the publicity and production stills,” she says. What got Jyotika excited was the knowledge that she would also be shooting for Shai, the main character of Dhobi Ghat who’s a photographer. The black-and-white photos shot by Shai in the movie are Jyotika’s. “When she told me that, I didn’t even want to read the script,” says Jyotika.

She had been unsure whether she would enjoy doing the production stills, but it turned out to be a great experience. Her first shoot was in a flat at Masjid Bunder, and in walked Aamir Khan. Jyotika had till then no idea that Aamir was part of the movie. “And Kiran is like, ‘This is the photographer’ and I am just like ‘hai’. I mean I wasn’t taken aback or something, but I was a little surprised because I didn’t know. All the characters were fresh and new. And then to see Aamir…,” she says. “He used to sit with all of us. He was kind of quiet. He was also busy. Because he was quite a bit on the internet and having meetings with people who would drop in on the sets to meet him. His assistants and all were there and they would be discussing other stuff.”

The whole team was young and the atmosphere was like that of a college film in the making. When they were not shooting, everyone was hanging out together, talking, eating or playing games. For the production stills, she couldn’t shoot while the filming was on because there was sync sound recording and the camera’s click would have interfered with it. So once the take was over, Jyotika would rearrange the same scene and shoot it. “If somebody’s reading a book and that’s what they filmed, I would make the person do it again,” she says.

The photography that she did for Shai was her most enjoyable experience. For ten days in December 2008 she went all over the city shooting for it. Kiran had given a list of things that she wanted shot. They were mainly obscure professionals like ear cleaners, knife sharpeners and water carriers. Jyotika knew where these people hung out. “If you have photographed in the city, you just know.” She shot the fish market at Grant Road and the water carriers in Zaveri Bazaar. When she went to Chowpatty to shoot the hawkers, they ganged up and asked her to go. “They thought I was a reporter. They didn’t trust me when I told them this will not appear in a newspaper. I left because it was getting scary.”

Though she’d shot Dhobi Ghat (the location) before, it was more fun doing it for the movie. “They had permissions taken and we were there from morning till night for three days. Earlier I would be there for an hour or so. I also had different times of the day to photograph in different light,” she says. 

When she had first been signed on, Kiran had told her it would be a festival film which might not even release in India. “But I didn’t care. At that point I wanted something to make my work more credible because I didn’t have anything published until then. She was taking a big risk and giving me that kind of exposure,” she says.

After the movie’s release, the credibility has come. “Recently, I was speaking to a few people in the Jewish community about taking photos and they were not very open to me. I don’t blame them. After what happened with the 26/11 attacks, they are also scared. But then I showed them my work and it made them more willing to listen.”

Jyotika uses a Canon 5D camera. She shoots most of her photos with a 24-70 mm lens. She shoots mostly by instinct. “But the instinct comes from somewhere. So the things that you have read or seen or learnt all come together at that time,” she says.

After Dhobi Ghat, her project now is a photo feature on dying communities. It started off as a feature on Parsis. A Paris-based writer of Parsi descent wanted to write about the community. She came down to do interviews and asked Jyotika to photograph. The project got delayed because the writer had to go back. Jyotika started shooting another dying community, India’s Jews. “I was waiting for that to resume but continued to research the subject. Every time I would read about dying communities, Jews seemed to come up. Meanwhile a friend, an American Jew, was coming down for a year and I thought he could help me by explaining the rituals of the community. He introduced me to a few people.” She started photographing the community in Mumbai, Alibaug, Kochi and Kolkata.  Jyotika is more comfortable with long-term projects like this. “I work on a story for a year or two. I do short term stories sometimes, but with long term, it’s easier to establish your characters.”

Dhobi Ghatfilm photographyMumbai