Photographer Megha Bhatia's reality check in the world of weddings

For almost a decade, Megha Bhatia has been curating wedding stories with her camera. She listens and captures what the bride and the groom wants.
For representational purposes. (File Photo)
For representational purposes. (File Photo)

CHENNAI: For almost a decade, Megha Bhatia has been curating wedding stories with her camera. She listens and captures what the bride and the groom wants. “Wedding photography is not only about candid pictures but also portraits, capturing food and all the nuances that make your day,” she shares.

When she captures the aesthetically rich frames through her lens, she curates the realities of the marriage situation in India in her new book, The Jitters behind the Glitters. Launching her work on Wednesday at Sage and Lavender, Alwarpet, the wedding photographer invited the audience in to the real world behind the camera.

Megha Bhatia launched her book in the
city on Wednesday | Karthik Saran

When Megha started her career as a child artist in movies, little did she know that she would mark her territory behind the camera. “I have done more than 125 advertisements and played the younger Madhuri Dixit’s Pooja in Dil To Pagal Hai. After college, I ventured into TV serials. In my 20s, I played an aunty but the job didn’t give me satisfaction. That’s when I took up photography, something that gave me inner satisfaction,” she says. Inspired by her brother Luv Israni’s work as a fashion photographer, she embraced the idea of doing something different by integrating technology and creativity. Hence, Israni Photography and Films was born in Mumbai.

She took the work as her studying ground and slowly progressed. The business had now expanded to almost all the major cities of the country including Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai.
With an experience of more than 1,000 weddings, Megha has now gathered up a team of more than 100 people. “We do multiple weddings in a day. I look at all the aspects of the storytelling, the backend production, and the entire manoeuvring of people. A lot of my work comes from wedding planners,” she says. From celebrity weddings to birthday parties and political events, the brand has branched out.

It was during the pandemic that Megha thought about giving back to society that made her. Rather than emphasising on the glam and luxury of weddings, Megha chose to focus on the darker and the more serious side. Through her book, she creates a platform for people to think about the reality of the hyped up weddings. “I want to reach out to young girls in a city who looks at Instagram and thinks of having a celebrity wedding. You don’t know what has gone behind those weddings and whether they are really living a marriage or not,” she says.

Megha faced rejections from multiple publishing houses but did not alter the story that spoke of topics like how a background check is often overlooked or how a bride focusses on the wedding rather than the institution of marriage. “Even though the cover looks colourful, it is all about the darker side. I have not written anything for the wedding industry; I address society. I want to make people focus on marriage rather than the three days of wedding,” she sums up.

‘The Jitters behind the Glitters’ is available on amazon.com

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