Remember the ‘mass molestation’ in Bengaluru on New Year’s Eve? Still raw in our memory, isn’t it? Surely some saying, ‘They were asking for it dressed like that’ might come to mind too. Unfortunate as it may seem, the society seems to care a lot about how women are dressed. Bengaluru-based student, Priyanka Shah decided to show people the kind of looks women get and just how intimidating it can be, in her latest project Perspectives. We speak to the 19-year-old photographer on the powerful series that’s now going viral. A film major at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in the city, Priyanka took on this project as part of her Photography as a Message class.
“I asked one of my friends to wear an outfit that she was most comfortable in – she chose an oversized t-shirt and shorts that she said she could never wear in public,” Priyanka tells us. “I just had a simple question when I started out – why couldn’t people be more accepting of us when we are our most comfortable selves?” asks the passionate 19-year-old, who drew an interesting parallel between self acceptance and body shaming –‘People try to be so self accepting of themselves, however the word outside can never stop judging, there are always comments or sighs passed in probably the most negative way...,’ she notes, captioning her pictures.
Armed with her Canon 600D, Priyanka and her batchmate Aishwarya Suresh went to a couple of parks around Yelahanka New Town and a flower market to shoot reactions of people that walked by. “I was hidden from view so I could get their actual reactions as opposed to what they would fake for the camera,” she says. Safety was a real issue – the girls were insulted by their fellow women folk (if you would believe it) laughed and jeered at.
“Ironically, we also had to take a shawl or jacket to cover up,” says Priyanka, adding that they could never shoot for two days in a row accounting to it getting too emotional for them. Reactions have been aplenty –“People are being extremely rude and I’ve been receiving quite a bit of hate saying that it’s ‘idiotic’, ‘stupid’, that ‘this was done only for attention’ and ‘if she dresses like this and poses, people are going to look,’” says Priyanka. “This is something that we go through and this was just my way of conveying that message,” she states.
Needless to say, the powerful photo series that doubled as a sort of social experiment that showed the scrutiny women have to endure in public spaces, went viral. “My parents were really happy about it. They were worried and asked me to be careful, but only supported me to go for it,” smiles Priyanka. On finishing college, the lass who specialises in portraiture wants to take to travel photo journalism.
“I want to shoot places that people haven’t been to and to comment on what hits me, in my own way,” she says, always turning to her personal experiences. Interestingly, Priyanka has taken to shooting tribes in their natural settings. “Although they have their own norms and values different from us, they are way more non-judgemental. Last year, I shot the tribes in Ethopia. This year, I’m looking at shooting the last of the living Headhunters in Nagaland,” she says, eyes firmly planted on the future.
