A tile-roofed house in the middle of nowhere. A small circle of relatives. A bride with minimal make-up. Coimbatore photographer Pon Prabakaran on how a simple village wedding he shot won him a prestigious award

Darkness had set in when photographer Pon Prabakaran arrived at Pappapatti village near Musiri in Tiruchi district in October 2017. He was on a wedding photography assignment, and was there to photograph the ‘gifting of the sari’ ritual at the bride S Kalaiselvi’s home. “It was pitch dark,” remembers Prabakaran. “There were just a couple of houses in the distance and an empty ground nearby. Other than that, there was nothing else I could see.”

Under the neon glow of a tube-light, the 28-year-old clicked a series of photos that won him an award under the category ‘Photoseries On a Single Wedding’ in the Better Photography magazine’s Wedding Photographer Of The Year 2018-2019 awards. The contest had 56 national and international jurists. “In the dim light, I could see how beautiful that small house was,” recalls the Chennai-based photographer. This was inspiration enough for Prabakaran.

The wedding was the next day in Musiri. “It was an ordinary affair,” says Prabakaran. “The stage had very basic decorations.” But what that hall did have was real people, with real emotions. And he documented it.

The photographs capture the special day in black and white: A nadhaswaram and tavil artiste play on a cramped portico, a checked lungi that someone left behind, suspended above them; a procession of women in a single file, carrying trays of flowers and bananas on their heads; a massive plate of potatoes being chopped in the kitchen of the wedding hall…then there are the typical wedding shots of the bride getting her make-up done; the groom and her seated on a flight of stairs…but there are some unique ones as well, that border on ‘art’. The picture of the bride and groom’s garlands suspended on two nails on either side of a window with wooden doors, two black-and-white family portraits within the frame, for instance.

The reason the photos came out well, is perhaps because Prabakaran loves village weddings. “In cities, weddings are all about showing off your wealth,” he feels. He finds the grandeur “fake”. He adds: “There’s so much planning involved; so much money is pumped into a single event.” But in a village wedding, especially the ones he’s photographed, everything goes with the flow. There’s less focus on the external aspects such as the stage and makeup. “Kalaiselvi hadn’t even booked a beautician for her big day; a relative got her dressed up,” he points out.

Prabakaran has been a photographer since 2012. “I initially worked at a small photo studio in Triplicane; I cut out passport size photos, took prints, tried my had at PhotoShop…”

When no one was around, he touched and felt the camera. “I eventually learned to take photos,” he says. Today though, he’s constantly travelling on assignments. He doesn’t make a distinction between city and village assignments, but the mention of the latter has him all pumped up.

Like the wedding he photographed in a village near Thoothukudi in 2016, for instance. The bride told him that the village was nothing extraordinary, and that her house was old and not what one would call beautiful. “But when I went there, I saw a house with bluish lime-washed walls with wooden windows, and a thatch-roof that sent out dappled light…it was the most beautiful house I’d seen,” says Prabakaran.