Inauspicious or Not, ‘Death Photography’ Is Varanasi’s Open Secret

Meet the ‘death-photographers’ of Varanasi, who earn a living out of photographing the corpses.

A click here, a selfie there, define the modern day life, but despite the omnipresent cameras, we rarely dare to document the most significant event of our life – death.

Photographing the loved one on the death bed may seem awkward to most of us, but for the ‘death photographers’ of Varanasi, its just another way to earn a livelihood.

25-year-old Ram Narendra runs his studio in the busy by-lanes of Manikarnika Ghat, where more than 100 cremation ceremonies happen daily. Self-taught in photography, Ram Narendra has been a ‘death photographer’ for more than five years now. It all started with a family approaching him to click a picture of the dead body as an evidence for a death certificate.

“I always loved photography, but I had never thought I would be doing this. I go to weddings, birthday parties, engagement ceremonies as a professional photographer and also click the dead on the ghats before they are taken to be burnt. Some people feel its bad, but I think I help the families create one last memory of the deceased,” tells Narendra, carefully ensuring that nobody around listens.

Back in the 19th century, when cameras became publicly available in the west, photographing the deceased was not very uncommon. A mother holding her dead child, a daughter kissing the dead father, a wife hugging her husband one last time were some of the most usual immortal frames.

In India, barring southern states photographing the dead is considered both inauspicious and awkward. But the small time photographers at Varanasi, armed with technology and camera-enabled phones, have found a business opportunity in clicking people who are dead.

Initially, there were only a few of us, now you can find many photographers ready to click dead bodies. Different customers have different needs. Some want the picture as a memory, to show it to the coming generations. Others want it as an evidence for insurance claims and to ease paperwork. Legal procedures are long and tedious in India and people like to play safe. Some even get group photographs clicked to mark their presence at the cremation.

Ram Narendra, Photographer

To make a living out of photographing corpses can be morbid, depressing and scary, but in a city known for celebrating death over life, countless professions thrive on the ‘ritual of death’. These photographers join the plethora of barbers, doms, cloth and timber merchants or Pandits of Varanasi, who earn a living by facilitating a person’s ‘last journey.’

“Death in Varanasi is not a moment of grief. You are lucky to be dying or cremated in Varanasi. Photography is a skill and I try to click the best pictures of my customers dead or alive,” says Shivpal, whom I contacted through an advertisement painted on the streets of Varanasi.

The ‘dead’s photography’ is like an open secret in Varanasi.

“We are all licensed photographers, so what we are doing is not illegal, but we are equally god fearing. In principle, we never click the pictures of dead babies, children and young men and women in their twenties because we know, whatever said and done, their pictures and memories will haunt the family forever.”

A few things are best forgotten, for everything else a camera somewhere, is always ready.

(All the names in the story have been changed on request.)