When 20-year-old Rasiya Banu first picked up a DSLR camera, she was terrified.
Growing up in Vyasarpadi, a working-class neighbourhood in North Chennai, she had become accustomed to hearing outsiders describe her locality with words like “dangerous”, “dirty”, or “rowdy area”. The labels followed her into classrooms and colleges. They shaped how others saw her before they knew her name.
Today, Rasiya uses photography to challenge those assumptions.
Through her lens, she documents football players, flood survivors, sanitation workers, grieving families, and the everyday lives of women in her neighbourhood. Each image becomes an act of reclaiming a story that others have long told on behalf of her community.
Rather than chasing dramatic moments, documentary photographers often find the most powerful stories in ordinary routines that reveal resilience, dignity and everyday life.
“People here are not as others describe. They are not criminals, and this place is not dirty,” she says, as she recalls her photography journey.
Rasiya is one among several young photographers mentored by Chennai-based documentary photographer M Palanikumar through Vyasai Thozhargal, a grassroots collective in Vyasarpadi that works with children and first-generation learners.
Over the past few years, the initiative has evolved beyond education support into something more ambitious: helping young people discover the power of visual storytelling and use it to represent their own realities.
In a neighbourhood often reduced to headlines and stereotypes, cameras have become tools of confidence, creativity, and social change.
A locality that refuses to be defined by stigma
To understand why photography matters so deeply here, one must first understand Vyasarpadi.
Vyasarpadi’s community exhibition replaced gallery walls with neighbourhood streets, turning the very place often judged by outsiders into an open-air exhibition space.
For decades, North Chennai neighbourhoods such as Vyasarpadi have been portrayed through a narrow lens. Popular culture frequently associates the area with crime, violence, poverty, or social unrest. Residents have repeatedly spoken about the discrimination they face simply because of their address.
“Try taking a taxi to Vyasarpadi,” Palanikumar says. “Most drivers will refuse to come inside.”
Yet the reality is far more complex.
Behind the stereotypes are communities built on resilience, solidarity, labour, and aspiration. Families work long hours to support children’s education. Women run households under difficult circumstances. Young people dream of becoming journalists, engineers, lawyers, artists, and teachers.
Many of these stories rarely make it into mainstream narratives. That gap is precisely what Vyasai Thozhargal seeks to address.
Documentary photography has long been used as a tool for social change, but participatory photography goes one step further by placing the camera in the hands of the community itself.
Founded in 2014 by first-generation graduates from the locality, the collective began as an educational movement focused on ensuring that children from the neighbourhood remained in school. One of its most visible initiatives is Dr Ambedkar Pagutharivu Padasalai, a free tuition centre that today supports around 150 students.
The organisation emerged from a simple belief: education can become a pathway to dignity and equality. Over time, however, its members realised that access to education alone was not enough.
Children also needed spaces to express themselves, develop confidence, and see possibilities beyond what society expected of them. Photography became one such space.
Handing over the camera
Palanikumar is no stranger to using photography as a tool for social justice. Known for documenting marginalised communities and labour issues, he has long believed that those living a story are often best positioned to tell it.
“If people from a particular community tell the story, the depth and emotions attached to that are even deeper,” he says. “The way they narrate their stories itself is a political statement.”
With support from Vyasai Thozhargal, he began training young residents of Vyasarpadi in photography and visual storytelling. The programme was not structured like a conventional photography class.
Community-led exhibitions shift the relationship between artist and audience by inviting visitors into neighbourhoods instead of isolating art inside galleries.
Instead of directing students on what to shoot, he encouraged them to observe their surroundings, speak to people, and photograph what mattered to them.
Participants were given access to cameras and taught technical skills, but equal importance was placed on empathy, observation, and storytelling.
For many, it was the first time anyone had asked them to document their own lives.
The transformation was remarkable.
Over the course of more than a year, students produced thousands of photographs capturing neighbourhood celebrations, household labour, local traditions, friendships, environmental challenges, sports, and family life.
What emerged was not merely a collection of images but an archive of lived experiences.
The stories outsiders never see
One of the most powerful examples came from Rasiya. Following the death of football player Priya, whose passing sparked widespread outrage across Tamil Nadu, Rasiya felt compelled to document the young athlete’s story.
“Priya was a stranger to me,” she says. “Yet I couldn’t accept that her passing was reduced to a mere news headline.”
Research consistently shows that when communities create their own visual archives, they challenge stereotypes far more effectively than narratives produced by outsiders.
Through photographs and conversations with family members, she created a visual narrative that restored humanity to a story many had encountered only through breaking news updates.
Other participants focused on equally intimate subjects.
There were images of single mothers working tirelessly to support their families. Photographs of sanitation workers taking a brief tea break after long shifts. Portraits of elderly temple workers carrying out decades of service despite financial hardship.
Some students documented flooding and climate impacts in North Chennai. Others explored gender, sports, friendship, and childhood. What connected all the projects was authenticity.
Rather than searching for dramatic scenes, the photographers turned their attention to ordinary moments that revealed extraordinary resilience.
“The students’ outlook on life, spaces, and the people they engage with is vastly different from external projections,” Palanikumar observed.
Their work challenged the tendency to view marginalised communities only through the lens of suffering. Instead, the photographs showed complexity: joy alongside hardship, aspiration alongside struggle, dignity alongside deprivation.
When confidence begins to grow
The impact of the initiative extends well beyond photography. For many participants, the experience has altered how they see themselves.
Dr Ambedkar Pagutharivu Padasalai, run by Vyasai Thozhargal, now supports around 150 children with free educational assistance alongside creative learning opportunities.
Young people who once hesitated to speak in public now discuss their work with visitors and journalists. Students who had never considered creative careers are exploring opportunities in journalism, media, and visual communication.
Nandhini, one of the participants, is pursuing journalism. Others have spoken about wanting to continue documenting social issues affecting their communities.
Photography has also created new forms of representation. Historically, communities such as Vyasarpadi have often been photographed by outsiders. The resulting images, while sometimes well intentioned, can still reinforce unequal power dynamics.
Here, the photographers belong to the neighbourhood. They know the people they photograph. They understand the context behind every image.
As Palanikumar noted, the students often notice details that outsiders might overlook. Their perspective is not observational. It is lived.
An exhibition on the streets
Perhaps the most symbolic expression of the initiative came through the exhibition Engal Therukkal Engal Kadhaigal, or Our Streets, Our Stories.
Rather than displaying photographs inside a conventional gallery, organisers transformed the streets of Vyasarpadi into an exhibition space.
North Chennai has produced celebrated sportspersons, musicians and artists, yet mainstream portrayals of the region have often focused disproportionately on crime and poverty.
Hundreds of photographs were displayed outside homes and along neighbourhood lanes. Visitors walked through the community while viewing stories created by its residents. The choice was deliberate.
“There is a need for actual recognition of North Chennai,” Palanikumar explained. “Every photo frame was placed outside their homes so that the exhibition attendees could easily communicate with them.”
The exhibition challenged not only perceptions of Vyasarpadi but also assumptions about who gets to be an artist, whose stories deserve visibility, and where art belongs.
For local residents, seeing their lives represented with dignity was deeply meaningful. For visitors, it offered an opportunity to encounter a side of North Chennai rarely portrayed in mainstream narratives.
More than photography
At its heart, the Vyasai Thozhargal initiative is not really about cameras. It is about access to creativity, self-expression and confidence.
For children growing up in communities where opportunities are often limited, these experiences can be transformative. A camera can become a bridge between observation and action. Between invisibility and recognition.
Community-led photography creates historical records that future generations can inherit, preserving neighbourhood memories that rarely appear in official archives.
The young photographers of Vyasarpadi are proving that stories do not need to come from outside experts or visiting journalists. Sometimes, the most powerful stories emerge when communities are trusted to tell their own.
As one message from the participating students declared before their exhibition: “What you’ve seen, heard, known and what you’ve told us. This isn’t Vyasarpadi. Only we can share our stories. And now, we are doing so.”
In neighbourhoods long spoken about by others, that simple act of self-representation may be the most powerful change of all.
