Big fat Indian weddings & international photographers

On day two of a five-day wedding in Jaipur, a belly on the brink of popping forced Malaysian wedding photographer Jay Chuah to extend his limited Hindi vocabulary. “Waiters kept serving me food and drinks. Finally, the event manager taught me to say nahi, shukriya,” he laughs.

Big fat Indian weddings are increasingly getting international photographers, like Chuah, to capture these important moments of a couple’s life. “Discerning brides are the most likely to hire a photographer from outside India,” says Joe Milton, executive director of the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers.

Riyaa Sethi, who is now based in Chandigarh with husband Soli Sethi, came across Malaysian photographer Hafiz Ismail’s website and was taken in by the quality she saw. “We thought that hiring a photographer from abroad might be out of our budget,” says Riyaa, “but Ismail’s rates began at $3000, which suited us just fine.”

Viral Chopra from Jaipur, marketing director of Crayons Advertising, was sure he wanted someone who could shoot his wedding in an artistic way. “I am not saying that Indian photographers are bad, but they do tend to click pictures in a conventional way,” he says. Chopra ended up hiring Chuah and a local photographer.

“Wedding photojournalism is far more developed in the West,” explains Paris-based Christophe Viseux, who has shot weddings all over India. “Nowadays young couples are looking for a photographer with a personal style to discover all the emotions and moments they might have missed during the event.”

Think global, shoot local
At the same time, Indian families are loathe to let go of the local wedding photographers completely. Old hands at shooting weddings, they know the subtle politics which might be invisible to the naive eye of a foreigner. Locals know the thumb rules: Get many flattering shots of the close family members and discreetly avoid the crass ones.

Usually, there’s a compromise: The couple hires someone who can take candid shots, without letting go of the all-important local photographer. While the traditional wedding photographer is easy to spot, lining up people for his shots, it is easy to mistake a foreign wedding photographer for a guest at the wedding. “I like to be invisible,” says Ismail. “I prefer to document the wedding as it happens… You cannot repeat a joke that was cracked or the tears that the bride shed on her mother’s shoulder.”

When New-York based photographer Steven Young reached Gujarat to shoot a wedding, he first got a feel of the culture by visiting villages, being invited into people’s homes to be fed tea and biscuits. Young was amused by the kind of grip that Bollywood has over India. “The pre-wedding party had a Bollywood theme. There were cardboard cutouts of actors and a red carpet, where relatives had to walk down dressed like stars. There was  also someone who impersonated Shah Rukh Khan (the name came to him after several minutes of intense thinking). Guests could go up to him and greet him.”

Having never met Riyaa and Soli before the wedding, Ismail visited their profile pages on Facebook to get a sense of who they were. “It was almost like stalking,” laughs Ismail. “But it is important to know the couple before you go and shoot the wedding.”

Odd traditions
Having travelled to Rajasthan and Mumbai for pleasure, Shira Weinberger, who is of Morrocan and Yemenite heritage and based in New York, was familiar with Indian culture beforehand. However, nothing prepared her for what she describes as the biggest surprise of the wedding ceremony — stealing the groom’s shoes. “I wasn’t familiar with that tradition and it took me a few minutes to understand what was going on,” recalls Weinberger, who’s shot a wedding in Mumbai.

If stolen shoes left Weinberger bewildered, a sari-clad fish at a Bengali wedding threw Toronto-based photographer Andrew Adams momentarily off guard. “It was a gift for the bride. The variety of traditions in the Indian culture is what keeps me fascinated with shooting Indian weddings. It never gets dull, that’s for sure,” says Adams.

Chauh has now begun watching and listening to Hindi movies and songs. A qualified engineer, Chuah even compares himself to Farhan Qureshi (portrayed by R Madhavan) in Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots, an engineering student who had a passion for wildlife photography. “I too faced a lot of opposition from my parents. I really felt Farhan’s story was my story.”

For some, the impact is more subtle. “The people of India have a rich culture and at times I wish as an American that our country would work harder at maintaining our cultural values,” says Amy Regeti, a Caucasian-American based in Washington DC, who has shot a wedding in Kerala.