Attention to rural India: Call to photographers Premium

New Delhi, Jan. 23: The President, Mr. V.V. Giri, to-day called upon press photographers, presently pre-occupied with politics and VIPs, to turn their lenses on the common people and their struggles and aspirations. “It is, of course, pardonable vanity on the part of politicians to expect to see their pictures in newspaper every day, but I believe the time has come to change our conception of news photograhy,” he said. The President was inaugurating a three-day convention of the Federation of Indian Photography and the “Indian Salon 1973” organised by the Camera Society of India. Noting that photography was a powerful medium of communication, the President urged photographers to devote their attention to the question of using it in the best possible manner to advance the national objectives. In particular, he wanted photographers to turn their attention more and more to rural India where over 80 per cent of the people lived. The need for acquiring a rural bias had been particularly underlined by the economic crisis through which the country was passing.