Gilles Coulon, a French photojournalist, is part of a collective that has brought out a magazine called Mad In India. He tells Neha Bhatt about this project.
What is Mad in India all about ?
It is a magazine that our collective, Tendance Floue, has put together in a couple of weeks. We collected significant pictures from across India, placing them along with articles written by Indian journalists.
The magazine is titled Mad in India, a spin-off on the term “Made in India”, because we had to be “mad” to think we could pull of a project of this enormity in just a couple of weeks! Hence, it’s Mad in India.
The book shows contrasting pictures of India... people and places. These are familiar to an Indian, but are these able to capture the country, as a whole, for a foreign audience?
We first came here earlier this year for the project, collected some material, and went back to France to work on the layout. We contacted various photographers and journalists in India to get an insight into the culture, because obviously, we are new to it.
Once we arrived in India, being a collective of 12, we divided ourselves up and dispersed to our chosen locations. In a couple of weeks, we brought it all together, on the terrace of small hotel in Old Delhi. It was a great experience.
How did this project really begin?
This one has been a joint miracle, really. Actually, Mad in India is part of our bigger, global project “Mad in ...” We have also done a Mad in China, and we’re planning to do projects in Brazil and Russia. In fact, we are adopting different ways of marketing these across the world.
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What are the marketing tools that you adopt?
Like in France, instead of being directly involved in the commercial market, we had rock bands do a gig, making their fans aware of this magazine through their performance.
Youngsters immediately connected with it. In China, unfortunately, Mad in China was banned because some of our views on society and the political regime didn’t go down well with the government. Thankfully, we have not faced any such problem in India.
What is the content of the magazine like?
The magazine looks at both new and old India: from the Singur protests to the banks of the Ganga, corporate offices juxtaposed with age-old workshops. There are articles by journalists and writers interspersed with the photographs.
(Mad in India is on sale at the French Information Resource Centre for Rs 900)