Tamil Nadu: The Indian men who photographed dead bodies - BBC News

Two photographers from Tamil Nadu recall what it was like taking pictures of the dead for a living.

15 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Richard Kennedy Image caption, Richard Kennedy was nine years old when he began taking photos of dead peopleBy Pramila KrishnanBBC World Service Warning: This story contains images and descriptions of dead bodies

Ravindran was 14 years old when his father Srinivasan, who ran a photography studio, sent him on an assignment.

"My job was to put a dead body on a chair and make it sit straight," says Ravindran about his first day at work in 1972.

"I then had to lift its eyelids so the photographer could take a picture."

Richard Kennedy was just nine when he had a similarly unnerving experience. He was asked to hold up a white cloth as a backdrop behind a chair on which a corpse was seated.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-66862838?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

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