CONSUMING ‘CANDIDNESS’: CONTEMPORARY WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY PRACTICES IN INDIA 0 0

Abstract

This essay maps how wedding rituals and the performance of those rituals have played out visually in the past and how the emergence of digital photography has visibly altered the understanding and practice of wedding photography in India. The gradual phasing out of the traditional wedding video-wallah and the standard frontal shots have given way to Photoshopped, colour corrected images, ready for consumption as coffee-table books. Drawing their theoretical gravitas from the practices of journalistic and fashion photography, contemporary wedding photography practices offer an exciting inquiry into the re-imagining of wedding photography in the lives of the Indian middle-class. Additionally, this essay also reflects on the changing figure of the bride - candid wedding photography now seems to position the bride as a free-floating signifier, occupying the space of ‘the bride’- a symbol standing in for all brides. This essay argues that the bride within the photograph does not seem to belong in it, and suspended from reality, exists in the realm of fantasy. Another emerging phenomenon within the changing visual discourse of wedding photography is also the ‘joy of sharing’ and the joy of ‘demonstrating joy’ through online social networking sites where celebrity wedding photos and every day social media users’ photos exist in the same universe, speaking to each other, and referencing similar ideas of love, marriage and conjugality. Subsequently this essay also explores the process of self-representation and the pleasure of sharing these images on social networking sites such as Instagram. Related to these concerns is also the fact that changing technology and contemporary digital culture has brought into focus how our lives are increasingly played out online, the digitalization of our shared memories and the impact of digital technologies on our daily lives.