Fisherwomen from Nagapattinam turn documentary photographers

Photographer Palanikumar trained 13 women in TN & Odisha, giving them the confidence to document their own stories.

Fisherwoman P Poonkodi will never forget the looks she got from people in her village when they first saw her with a DSLR camera.

“I felt uncomfortable,” recalls the 34-year-old, who is from Seruthur in Nagapattinam. “They asked lots of intrusive questions, but I eventually learned to ignore them,” she adds.

Poonkodi is among the 13 women photographers M Palanikumar trained as part of a three-month workshop organised by the NGO Dakshin Foundation. The first thing he told the fisherwomen when he handed them DSLR cameras was to simply feel the equipment. “It was important that they felt they could handle the camera,” says the Chennai-based independent photographer.  

In February last year, boys and girls from North Chennai, whom Palanikumar trained, displayed their photos at an exhibition titled REFRAMED in the city. The exhibition that was the result of a six-month long workshop, paved the way for a similar workshop with the fisherwomen of Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu, and Ganjam in Odisha.

“Dakshin Foundation, a non-profit organisation reached out to me with the idea,” says the 32-year-old, who contributes to People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI). What followed was a week-long session at Nagapattinam, followed by another one at Ganjam.

“We first met at the seaside on a particularly hot day,” Palanikumar recalls, adding that the idea was to train the women in their own environment. In Nagapattinam, he trained seven women: A Mahalakshmi, M Lakshmi, P Poonkodi, V Manjamatha, M Suganthi, S Bharathi and Parimala from fishing hamlets such as Keechankuppam and Pazhayar. They worked with DSLR cameras that Palanikumar bought with his own funds, and with contributions from friends.

Palanikumar does not believe in rigorous, structured training when it comes to photography. “When one holds the camera, the device automatically turns political,” he feels. “Apart from documenting what we see around us, we eventually tend to train the lenses on our problems.” This was the case with the fisherwomen as well. “They were chosen from the community for the workshop based on their eagerness to learn and use the camera as a political tool,” he adds.