One of my favourite black and white photographs is an image of Muslim women mourning together against a clipped black background on Muharram. The women in the photograph are all wearing hijab — only their faces and hands are visible through openings in the veiled garment. Each one of them wears a solemn look. Some of them have one of their hands pressed on their chest. One of them is holding onto a child — a young boy with his back turned to the camera. There's something so poignant about this image that looking at it triggers a visceral, emotional response in me. I cannot keep looking. I have to look away. I cannot look away. I have to keep looking. Such is the power of this image made by the pioneering Indian photojournalist Sharampal Chowdhry, better known as S Paul.
Born in Jhang, Punjab, in present-day Pakistan on August 19, 1930 — which also happens to be World Photography Day — S Paul migrated to India with his family during Partition. He began his professional career working as an engineering draftsman for the Indian Railways in Shimla, but left the job in 1951 to pursue photography as his full-time profession. His first camera was a Zeiss Ikon 6x6 medium format camera. Paul taught himself photography with the help of photography books and learned to develop his own films from a photo studio and film lab in Shimla.
In the 1950s and 60s, Paul made a name for himself as a photojournalist first at The Statesman and later at The Indian Express at a time when photojournalism was still at a nascent stage in India. Paul's work at this time spanned across sports, politics (he infamously refused to photograph Prime Minister Morarji Desai once due to disagreements over light), and the Pakistan War. Between 1962 and 1988, he worked as the Chief Photographer for The Indian Express and, along with Kishor Parekh of Hindustan Times, charted the course for photojournalism in India. During this time, Paul also mentored his younger brother Raghunath Rai Chowdhry — the legendary Indian photographer better known as Raghu Rai.
Unlike his more outgoing younger brother Rai, however, Paul was a more reclusive and private person. Despite receiving an offer to join Magnum Photos in the late 60s after the prestigious British Journal of Photography published a profile of Paul and his work in 1967, Paul chose to remain in Delhi, focusing on his work with The Indian Express and mentoring hundreds of young photographers and photojournalists like Pramod Pushkarna. In a tribute to Paul published in the National Herald a day after his death, Pushkarna wrote, "His photography discipline was sacrosanct – he had to take new photographs each day, he would process them and make prints to send them out the next day. Even after retirement he continued with the routine."
In his decades-long career, S Paul achieved almost every accolade possible across the world of photography. He became the first Indian photographer to win the Nikon International Photo Contest in 1971, and went on to win several other awards during his career. He was conferred the National Lifetime Achievement in Photography Award by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, in 2010.
An obsessive perfectionist and an exceptionally private person, Paul was fiercely protective of his work and never published a monograph or book. He passed away on August 16, 2017, three days before turning 87. He was cremated at Nigambodh Ghat by the banks of the Yamuna in Delhi along with his camera.
See a selection of S Paul's photographs here.
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