This Saturday morning was spent with an enthusiastic group of image makers at the colourful Dadar Flower Market. The young men and women, mainly techies and start up wallah’s armed with DSLRs and Leica’s went out into the market with a gusto to hunt with trophy images. The market in the morning is buzzing with commerce and chaos, and the hum of the train with the Dadar Train Station next door. The photographers were often gently told off, and many did buy flowers. Yet, it did feel intrusive, and as ethnographers know well- the field has unequal power dynamics.
The urban is a theatre, and the colors of the flower market was a performance of the olfactory, and of the senses. The static image is unable to capture the fullness of the soundscape of bhojpuri dominating Marathi in the most Maharashtrian of Mumbai neighbourhoods- Dadar. The neighbourhood which is home to the Shiva Sena.
Flowers are conduits of the sacred and of celebration. Flowers are a part of the everyday. The images are a part of archiving of a Mumbai where the informal cash economy still dominates, and yet there were QR codes with many. We are not far from a time where flower tech, might be a buzzword. Ferns and Petals has created an online delivery marketplace.
As we image make, we often grapple with the neo-colonial politics of the camera lens or the smart phone, which is even more subversive when we land up to take images in a community in which we are not known. Is there a way, we can take consent in a street photography context? These are not mountains but people working for their living.
These are the questions that i think with today.
Change Thinker 