Photojournalists Chirag Wakaskar and Ravi Mishra have been friends for a long time now. When they created their respective photography projects Everyday Mumbai and Everyday India, they wanted to bring to the fore stories that were hidden behind the glamorous filters of the social media world. "People are fascinated by glitz and glitter. They want to know more about Priyanka Chopra and her life more than anything else," says Wakaskar.
Started more than four years ago, he likes to describe the project as "a visual chronicle of Mumbai city." "Mumbai is the microcosm of India – there is a little bit of different parts of India here," he says.
Mishra, on the other hand, started Everyday India five years ago. "When I started photography, I soon came to realise that the industry had a lot of gatekeepers. One had to knock on several doors till one opened," he recalls. "But why the need to knock on doors when one has talent?"
The page is run by 44 contributors, all belonging to different fields. "One would think we are a team of photojournalists. However, we are an amalgamation of everything art: filmmakers, writers, artists and poets also make up our team," he says. This, in addition to weekly photo features, keeps their content democratic. From Madhya Pradesh and Delhi to Chhattisgarh, Everyday India captures the rural sentiment with ease and perfection.
Across the border, in Pakistan's Lahore, 21-year-old Anas Saleem has been curating the Everyday Pakistan Instagram page since February this year. Weekly features from those using the hashtag #EverydayPakistan enables him to share stories from the farthest of spaces in the country. "Pakistan is a big place. Thanks to curation though, we are able to share stories from not just the metropolitans but also remote corners," says Anas, adding, "We want to show that the country has its own set of struggles and an everyday life that is perhaps unknown to outsiders."
Instagram feed Everyday Africa was created by photojournalists Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill to counter the damaging stereotypes that supposedly define a continent from the perspective of the outsider, widely referred to as poverty porn.
"In March 2012, Merrill and I were on an assignment together in Ivory Coast and we were reporting on the country's post-conflict environment. The idea from the project came about when we both realised how frustrated we were with the fact that we had confined ourselves to such a narrow view of the country. It happened naturally: we started shooting with our phones and we captured real moments. It was refreshing because the pictures we were taking veered away from the preconceived narrative; and in some ways this idea of broadening the context of imagery taken in West Africa shone through," DiCampo said in an earlier interview with an online publication.
Tackling poverty porn is also a part of Wakaskar and Mishra's vision. "In our country, there are a million stories waiting to be told. Yet, the ones that find their way out are stereotypes about India being a poor country and its inhabitants are coloured as not just being poor but also uneducated and under-privileged," says Wakaskar, who has brought up this issue up several times, even writing to multiple publications.
This, he believes, is also a result of a "lack of interest in photojournalism". Comparing it to the US, where he currently resides, he points out that the Indian photojournalism scene is nowhere close. "Indians are unfortunately not keen to see their own photographs, read their own story. There is just a dry lack of interest that ails the field right now," he laments.
