City’s shutterbugs to capture Dhobi Khana through video walk

With hundreds of men and women sweating it out in the sun as they wash a few thousand garments on a daily basis, the massive grounds offer tons of vibrant images to behold, particularly for the shutterbugs.

While many photo walks in the past attempted to capture the lives of men and women working at the Dhobi Khana, city-based photographers’ forum, Madras Photo Bloggers, will be undertaking a unique video walk to capture on film the water splashing, the interactions between the washerwomen and washermen.

“Even though the photo walks help capture the moments, we might not be able to capture the entire scenarios through photographs. So, we introduced video walks to record the real essence of the place, its people and their activities. A group of videography/film enthusiasts will be gathering to record the entire scenes of the Dhobi Khana community’s daily routine. The grounds also offer a lot of scope for filming and presenting the locality’s stories through its own people,” says Srivatsan Sankaran, the founder of Madras Photo Bloggers.

The three to five minute short films that will be made from the video walk will capture the culture, history and lesser known stories from the place. Balakrishnan, who will be co-ordinating the walk, says the resulting films will be interesting as they give a chance to look at one place through the perspectives of different people. “As the Dhobi Khana will be full of activity, it is left to one’s creative freedom to decide what their film will focus on. The activity can help amateur film enthusiasts or working professionals who want to improve their filmmaking skills. Since a video walk will require more planning and technical skill than a photo walk, we will have experts guiding the participants through thewalk,” he adds.

The video walk will be held on July 6 from 6 am to 8 am at Dhobi Khana.