Madras Photography Society
Founded in 2002 by Mr. K. Ponnusamy and Mr. Ashok Kedia, in association with Jaigopal Garodia Photojournalism Academy.
Mr. K .Ponnusamy
Founder
Mr. K. Ponnusamy born on 05.10.1929, had his schooling at St. Gabriel High School, Georgetown. He was introduced to photography by his neighbor who also presented him with a Kodak Brownie box camera. Another source of encouragement was his class teacher, also a photographer. He tried to learn about developing and printing from the neighborhood photo studio without much success. He joined the Madras Amateur Photographic Society (MAPS) functioning from Purasaiwakkam in the year 1948. This helped him to improve his knowledge and skills in Photography.
He joined Govt Hospital as a technician in the radiology dept. After working for some time, he joined the Police department as a Photographer. He learnt about color photography from Mr. Raman of Gemini color labs of Madras. He was selected for a job in Hindustan Photo Films, but he didn’t get the job. Later he joined as a technician in Agfa-Gevaert at Madras.
When the color films and papers became available in Madras, he felt the need for teaching about color processing and printing and started doing it. He started making color filters for color printing locally which reduced the cost drastically. He also made a temperature-controlled tank for color film processing.
When the automatic developing and printing machines were introduced, he started training people to run those machines.
In 1980, he started the Sourthern Color Labs at Gemini Parsons complex through which he was teaching photography. This helped many people in learning photography.
In 2002, along with Jaigopal Garodia Photojournalism Academy, he started the Madras Photography Society (MPS) and was actively involved in running it for many years.
When Konica Came to India, he joined the Institute started to teach Photography. He was training the technicians for operating fully automatic color lab machines till 2004.
His favorite fields were Travel and Photojournalism. He passed away on 01.03.2017.