Four Instagram Live chats worth remembering!
This lock down has no doubt been frustrating for all but it has also provided opportunities to try out some new things. Instagram live is one such experiment that I thought of trying out without knowing a single thing about it. And now after two weeks and four live chats later I just can't stop thinking how fabulous it is. As a teacher of photography I continuously share my knowledge with my students and at the same time love to hear their perspective on photography, art, experiences that they have had as students of photography, commercial photographers or just practitioners of this wonderful medium. I thoroughly enjoy the conversations that I have with my students especially when they are outside the confines of the classroom in a more non-restrictive environment. Instagram live provides just the right kind of platform to communicate in a space that is both personal and public at the same time, not to mention that this younger lot of visual artists take to Instagram as naturally as fish to water. So when I proposed the idea of having an Instagram chat to some of my students they not only willingly accepted it, but came up with points that they wished to bring up in the conversation. So far I have spoken to four of my ex students from four successive batches that I taught over the last four years and each of the conversation was an absolute delight. The medium that we used probably played a noteworthy role in deciding the nature of the interaction keeping it informative yet casual, organic and fluid. All four of them Miheer, Ashutosh, Onil, and Yash are only in their early twenties and yet their understanding of photography, their ability to learn from the experiences in a reasonably short career (if I may call it that), their sheer commitment to the medium be it in terms of craft or art and their maturity in understanding that they find themselves at the threshold of a huge, inevitable transformation in the field of photography and it is probably they who will be instrumental in bringing about this change is phenomenal. I could hold on to this common thread in all four conversations despite each one of them working in different genres of photography being at a different stage in their career, though not very far apart, and having personal goals and aspirations that could not be more dissimilar. The teacher in me feels extremely contented to know that future of photography in India is bright if there are more people like them.
Though I know all of them very well I feel these chats did open up newer aspects of their personality that I was not aware of and I can't express how thrilled I was of having taken this plunge after the initial reluctance to do so. So I want to genuinely thank these guys for providing exciting material in these weeks of lock down and gloom. I hope whatever audience we could garner though limited has also enjoyed every bit of the conversations. The feedback that I received from a few people certainly would say so. It has certainly given me something to work on and as I write this there are more students of mine who are wanting to take this venture forward and be a part of it. Hopefully this materializes in to something substantial. Even if it does not the chords that these conversations have strung will forever feel as good music to my ears for years to come.
Just sharing the links to the Instagram handles of these guys.
https://www.instagram.com/miheerdhamankar/
https://www.instagram.com/ashutoshhjoshi/
https://www.instagram.com/0nil.shah/
https://www.instagram.com/yashyeri/