The Monthly talks to Parag Gopale about his career as a photographer – Part 1 – The camera as an object

How did you get interested in photography?

When I was a child, my family had a camera which I still own; I have it with me in Paris, it was a simple Nikon “Point and Shoot” camera. I was really interested in this camera as an object. I liked the look of it, it was interesting to me, the fact that it would zoom out and in, and I liked what this object was able to do. It was able to capture moments. And whenever my family, either my dad or my uncle, would want to take a photograph of me, I would agree, as long as I could take a picture as well. I just wanted to hold the camera and to look through the viewfinder and to press that shutter.

Later, towards my early teens, around 1998-99, when I would go on school trips, school picnics, my dad would let me borrow the camera. I would only have one roll of film, which allowed you 36 photographs. I had to use that film in a very miserly fashion, and I was always trying to take the best photograph, the best picture.

I remember being on a trip in Mumbai, I’m from India originally, and as I was taking a photograph and my friend put his hand in front of the lens, and he ruined the photograph. I was taking a shot of a landscape and I was furious and I can remember the fight I had with him. I despite it being ruined I kept that picture.

So, those are my earliest memories of being attracted to the camera and to photography; particularly my family’s “Point and Shoot” camera.

Did your family support you in your interest in photography?

The camera was always in my Dad’s cupboard. It wasn’t with me every day. It was almost always a special occasion that I would get access to it, a birthday or a naming ceremony or a festival. And when I had the camera, it would come with warnings and its own protocols, so I was always very careful with it when I did have access to it.

So how did you further your interest?

We didn’t have photography at school, there was no course you could do or a darkroom you could use, so there was no way of learning through school, and as I said, I had occasional access to the family camera. Sometimes I would get access to a camera from my uncle. He always seemed to have his camera with him and it was an SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera.

I remember I wanted an SLR Camera. I didn’t actually know what an SLR was, but my uncle had his SLR camera. He was a good photographer and he took all the childhood photos of me and my sister. He took some wonderful photos, and I wanted to get a camera like his.

It sounds like it wasn’t an easy journey to follow your passion regarding photography?

I had my fascination with the camera as an object, but there were other things which influenced me. As a teenager I would play cricket. In India cricket is everything, like a religion, and I was always travelling on the train to cricket training and to play cricket. Then when I entered Junior College, that is year 11 and 12, and that was when I was travelling all the time on public transport as a student. I found myself focusing on the passengers in the trains or on other forms of public transport. I was fascinated by people’s journeys. How people talked to each other, how they discussed things on the phone while they travelled. I was always wondering what people were focusing on, how they weren’t actually focusing on their journey. I decided that photographing people on public transport was something I was interested in doing. I will say more about this later, but the key thing is that I started observing people on public transport, mainly trains, and I wanted to capture those moments.

What happens then?

When I studying as an undergraduate, I was studying Computer Science, and one day a person came to the class and said they needed volunteers to take photographs of a festival. My hand was up in the air before I even had given it any thought. I don’t even remember them finishing the sentence.

I was given a camera, a DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex), and I took photographs for that particular event. That person thought I was doing a good job and he introduced me to a professional photographer who also liked my work. I was offered a job taking photographs.

Is that what starts your work as a photographer?

Yes. He took me to Indian Fashion Week and I had to take photographs of the models. He explained whereabouts I had to stand and what kind of photographs I had to take, I had to get a full shot and a head shot. That was quite a learning process because there were many photographers near the podium all trying to get a good photograph. I had to learn very quickly how to work as a professional photographer. How to position yourself to keep still and focus on the subject.

At this point in your life, you are in the process of shifting careers?

I was working for a while and I had been skipping my classes on computer sciences, computer coding, and as I come from a family background of technical people, the idea was that I would get my degree and end up working for a big tech company. I was quite good at the exams, but I really did not want to be an engineer.

I was being paid to do work as a Photographer’s Assistant and I wasn’t disclosing this at home. Eventually, my mum found cash in one of my bags which was far more than the pocket money I was receiving. I think she thought I was betting on cricket, which was quite a big thing at the time.

My parents were very worried, in case I was getting involved with the wrong company, so I phoned the photographer I was working for and they found out from him what I was doing. We had a discussion about the fact that they were pushing me into engineering and that wasn’t really what I wanted to do and photography from that point on became the career I was most interested in.