Paper long abstract:

My paper will be an in-depth study of contemporary photographic practices in local studios and around temples in Delhi. It will delve into how 'Adobe Photoshop' has changed consumers' and photographers' perception about the medium, representation and aesthetics of the images produced. It will look into the process of production, consumption and circulation of digital images as well as the shifting skills of the local photographers.

Along with this study,I would like to argue that images produced through 'Adobe Photoshop' in local studios has its genesis in the 'Trick photography' of the seventies. Trick photography was an indigenous technique which played a crucial role in evolving a popular language of photography in melas, street corners and later in the local studios of seventies. It left a deep impression on its consumers and generated an irresistible temptation to return to local studios and mela photography corners.

Such innovative photographic techniques were evolved not by professionals but by amateur photographers. These were uneducated quasi urban photographers- who (re)learnt, experimented and arrived at their own unique procedures of creating a photograph which is comparable to today's digital photographs.

In my paper, I would propose that even though technologically 'Adobe Photoshop' came after the economic boom of nineties in India, the images produced using 'Adobe Photoshop' in local photography studios are not radically different from the photographs produced in 1970s through 'Trick Photography'. In fact, contemporary popular photographic images are an extension or replication of the aesthetic norms and representations established in the sixties and seventies.