A school-leaving group photo taken in 1962
A group photograph of a class taken in 1962 is pure nostalgia, compared with current digital technology used by smartphone toting youngsters who take a selfie or a video at the slightest occasion, and share results instantly at no cost.
Any talk of a school-leaving final year group photo brings nostalgia, to anyone. I recall my own experience of that in the month of March in 1962. We, the students of the final year of our class at A.S. Higher Secondary School, Khanna (Punjab), a boys’ school, were told to come dressed up for the group photograph on the chosen day. Ours was a large school with six sections in the final class, and each section having about 60 boys. The group photographs were taken section-wise from Section A to Section F. The boys assembled, in the open, at school ground at 4.30 pm, considering that ideal conditions of natural lighting would be just about an hour before the sunset which happened at about 6.45 pm.
The boys were all in white shirts, and trousers with some of them wearing neck-ties, though our school had no formal dress-code for students. Some teachers, including those who taught the Section being photographed, and a P.T. teacher, were on duty to keep the boys organized quick and fast as per the instructions of the photographer.
At about 5 pm, a photographer from Sharma Studios, the best in town, arrived with a collapsible large-format camera, a tripod, and other accessories, accompanied by the Headmaster of our school. We were all guided to a location in shade, where the light was diffuse and a few boys quickly helped to set up the chairs for the first row in which the teachers would sit. Leaving space for the second row for the boys in standing condition, the classroom benches were aligned for the third and fourth rows, in both of which the boys would stand.
The photographer had, in the meantime, set up his camera on the large tripod, and was checking the scene through the camera’s rear part, looking at the image falling on a ground glass sheet, through a large lens in the front in order that he could set the best conditions of exposure and depth-of-field before transferring the image to the film, which would be developed later in his studio. At about 5.30 pm, Section A boys were asked by the P.T. teacher to take up their positions in the rows assigned. Minor shifting of the boys was done as per the suggestions of the photographer’s assistant. The boys from the other Sections, including our B Section, were asked to wait in Qs at a distance.
Finally, when all things were set to the satisfaction of the photographer, the teachers of Section A were asked to sit on chairs in the front row, with Mr. Madan Gopal Chopra, the Headmaster, in the middle. The camera was facing them at a distance of about fifteen feet. The photographer and his assistant, while standing near the camera covered by the black cloth to avoid any extraneous light to fall on it, shouted a few routine instructions, such as asking the boys to look at the camera straight, and stay rock-steady during the exposure of the film-plate, until they are told, DONE! No talking was permitted during the period of exposure of the film, to avoid distractions and movement of any boy. At this juncture, the photographer took out a film holder — a rectangular wooden box, containing the film, and fitted it to the rear-side of the camera for exposure. He shouted READY, raising his finger, and pulled out the opaque sheet in front of the film. All went quiet. The few-seconds exposure done by removing the cover from the front lens looked like an eternity, and ended with a loud ‘DONE’!
Next came the turn of my Section B. I was wearing a white shirt borrowed from Ravinder Sood*, a classmate, who did his M.D. later and became a well-known doctor of the town. We, the Section B, too, went through the same cycle of instructions to get our group photograph done.
Group photograph of the author’s class taken in March 1962 at A.S. Higher Secondary School, Khanna. The upper circle encloses author’s picture, and the lower circle encloses the picture of his cousin, Dharam Pal. Ravinder Sood is standing on the left of the author.
Each student was asked to collect his copy of the group photograph from the photographer’s Studio, after a week. When I look at that B&W photograph now, all the boys of my Section look glum and tight. I am standing in the third row. It is fun to locate the exact position of a classmate in this photograph after six decades have passed, since the boys became men, settled in their professions and facial features of many changed enormously, with age. Interestingly, the pose of the teachers sitting in the first row in a school group photograph hasn’t changed much over the years, with each of them sitting with both hands folded in his lap for symmetry.
A study in posture was our Headmaster, who invariably sat stiff like a statue, whether in our 1962 group photographs, or the group photographs of students taken at our school, years before or after. He is found sitting in the same pose, head tilted a bit to his left, headgear in place, as always. He can’t be blamed because anyone ‘in position’ who sat for a B&W group photograph in those days had to look important. Take the case of the famous group photograph taken at the Solvay conference in Belgium in 1927, in which 17 of the group of the famous 29 posing for the photograph were already or became Nobel Prize winners later. It shows each one of them looking fairly serious, perhaps as per the directions of the photographer, and no one is smiling. Compare this with the scenario at large conferences these days, at times with a few hundred participants. The photographer needs to perch on the roof of a portico at the venue of the conference, or peer through his camera from a first-floor window to cover all the participants, some of whom still continuing in animated conversation with others participants standing alongside, even while being clicked. But with the digital color technology supporting him, the photographer does get the best results, that too without shouting any instructions to stay still, etc.
These days, when my grandchildren bring their school group photographs, I can notice that the children, as well as their teachers in them often look relaxed and even smiling, and that now the photographs are in color, clicked by a photographer using a small digital focusing camera. And several children and parents even click the group with their smartphone, with adequately good results.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
*I dedicate this article to the memory of my friend, Dr. Ravinder Sood, who died a year ago.
