SURENDAR
SNAPS PHOTOS ON THE SIDEWALK
Meet Surendar Chand: he’s one of India’s most jovial craftsmen. For most of his life he has stood faithfully on the same street corner by his 150-year-old Karl Zeiss pinhole camera.
“Photos, old photos,” he called from the sidewalk.
Locals and tourists stopped to see his display of ancient photos as they passed through on their way to the famous Hawa Mahal, Jaipur’s wonderfully Wes Anderson-esque building.
His black wooden camera box, about the size of a microwave, was perched atop a rather dainty looking, fine mahogany tripod stand.
Surendar jumped forward when he saw me looking at it. “Only one left in the whole world,” he said.
The camera is three generations deep. Surendar’s grandfather, Pahari master, was the royal photographer in the 1800s. After 50 years he passed it down to his son, who then passed it down to Surendar and his brother Tikam.
My friend took a seat on a makeshift wooden bench in front of the camera. Below it was a mirror for him to groom himself in. Surendar corrected his posture and offered him a comb. He likes his customers to look like royalty, you see.
He stood behind the camera, leant back with his hands on his hips, squinted at my friend, and gave a single nod. He was ready.
The camera opened up at the back to the built-in dark room where a postcard of lord Krishna was sheltered for extra good luck. With one hand Surendar held the camera steady and with the other he reached inside the box and slid the lens back and forth until it focused. He removed the lens cap for no more than two seconds then raised his hands and let out an excited,
“Aye! Good.”
My friend stood up to look thinking his photo would be ready. Surendar quickly stole his seat. He pulled out a suitcase from underneath that had all these chemical-filled tubes and beer bottles inside. He mixed different concoctions together, dipped the photograph in a murky solution and then in a bucket of water. The result was an x-ray vision photo.
The entire process was then repeated. Only this time the negative image was put inside the box upside down. Amongst this he kept referring to his Karl Zeiss as the “minute camera” … though we were 20 minutes in by this stage.
As tuktuks hooted their horns at vendors who tried to set up their stalls on the road, and men with potbellies yelled at each other from their market stalls, Surendar repeated the process of dipping and drying the photos. Once that process was complete he wrapped them up in a newspaper and presented my friend with his bespoke portrait.
For Surendar, the older better. “Digital things has made us lazy,” he said, “Clicking pictures is art. Mouse, phone… not art.”
And he’s not wrong. The photos have a vibe to them, this kind of nostalgic gravitas.
To the next couple in line, he even offered special effects. Opt for the “deluxe service” and he’ll rub secret chemicals on you to add a royal moustache to your hairless upper lip, or finesse some other human insecurity you might have. The man is a magician I tell you.
Surendar and his brother are photographers, engineers, and repairmen of the camera—last practicing street portraitists in India. They’re training their sons up to carry on the family profession they’ve sustained for 95 years. When I asked why he’d stayed there for so long, he wrapped his arm around his camera, looked at the couple adoring their new photo and said,
“This makes people happy.”
And so it seemed. A rather charming throwback in time right on the salmon coloured streets of Jaipur. A window into the history of photography, still wrapped in tattered and aged black leather.
Surendar gets a badge for his passion for bringing joy to the streets and capturing people on his 1860 Karl Zeiss Camera.