Kanavu Fellowship is a small but mighty step in addressing the gender gap in photography and filmmaking. Read our interview with photographer and co-founder of the Chennai Photo Biennale Foundation Gayatri Nair.
Photography has the power to tell powerful stories rooted in equally struggles and strengths. To shine a light on the hidden stories nestled through our lives its important that everyone who is passionate about visual storytelling has the opportunity to access and expand their skills behind the camera.
This is where initiatives like the Kanavu Fellowship comes in to tackle the issue of gender gaps in photography and cinematography. The one-year mentoring program launched by the CPB Foundation, Studio A, and SPI Edge is a structured fellowship that offers female-identifying candidates across Tamil Nadu, the opportunity to learn and hone their skills in photography and film-making.
In conversation with Lyrical Muse, Chennai-based photographer and the co-founder of the Chennai Photo Biennale Foundation, Gayatri Nair dives into the small but powerful effort that offers female photographers the accessibility and visibility they deserve.
She dives into the core mission of the Kanavu Fellowship, the challenges faced by female-identifying photographers in India, the future goals of the fellowship and more. Read the full Q&A below!
- What is the core mission of the Kanavu Fellowship and what sparked the idea?
Kanavu means “dream” in Tamil — and that name really captures what this programme is at its heart. Our mission is to give women from Tamil Nadu access to professional training in photography and filmmaking, particularly women from marginalised or low-income backgrounds where those opportunities simply don’t exist.
The spark came from something we kept noticing while working on the Chennai Photo Biennale: the field was dominated by men — not because women lacked talent or drive, but because they lacked access. Equipment is expensive. Formal training is expensive. Professional networks are hard to enter when you’re already on the outside looking in.
Kanavu was our answer to that. We weren’t trying to change ambition — the ambition was already there. We were trying to change access. We launched in 2021 in partnership with Studio A and SPI Edge, and the very first cohort showed us we were onto something real.
- Tell me a bit about how the fellowship works to empower female-identifying photographers? How does it address the gender gap in the field?
The fellowship runs for about 1 year at a time and it’s genuinely intensive — in the best way! Participants spend the first month on photography: camera technique, lighting, portraiture, documentary work. Then they move into filmmaking — scripting, direction, cinematography, sound, editing. And woven throughout are soft skills sessions on social media, brand-building, marketing, and how to actually run a creative business.
But what really tackles the gender gap — beyond the curriculum — is everything around the curriculum. We provide cameras and equipment. We connect women with industry mentors. We facilitate internship placements with studios and creative teams. And at the end, every participant shows her work at a public exhibition and film screening.
That moment — standing in front of an audience and saying “I made this” — is genuinely transformative. We also deliberately recruit from marginalised communities: women from SC/ST backgrounds, LGBTQIA+ women, women from low-income households. There are enough programmes for people who already have a foot in the door. Kanavu is for everyone else.
- What is the biggest issue/challenge faced by female-identifying photographers in India? How is it being addressed and what more can be done?
Three things consistently hold women back: cost, confidence, and culture.
The cost barrier is immediate and real — a decent camera setup can cost more than many families earn in a month, and formal photography courses aren’t cheap. Informal routes into the industry — assisting photographers, networking at events — also require social capital that women from conservative backgrounds often haven’t had the space to build.
Then there’s culture. Even when a woman has the passion, she often faces scepticism at home about whether photography is a ‘real’ or ‘safe’ career. We’ve had fellows whose families weren’t supportive at first — and then watched those same families show up beaming with pride at the final showcase.
Kanavu tries to dismantle all three barriers at once: we remove the cost, we build skills and confidence in a structured, supportive environment, and the public showcase creates a proof point for families and communities. What more can be done? We need more programmes like this outside the metros, studios willing to open their doors to interns from non-traditional backgrounds, and platforms amplifying women photographers so younger girls can see themselves in those images.
The myth I’d most like to put to rest is simply this: that women aren’t interested. They absolutely are. Every application cycle, we see the proof.
- What’s been the proudest moment since the fellowship launched? Any highlights from participants or impact/changes you’ve noticed?
There have been so many moments. But the feeling that keeps returning is watching the shift in how a fellow carries herself between the first day and the last.
One of our alumni, Bhuvaneshwari from Salem, recently wrote about her most memorable shoot — birth photography. She was behind the camera for a full delivery. She described hearing the baby’s first cry and being extremely emotional. This is a woman who came to us with technical knowledge but zero field experience, who felt too shy to even shoot in public. Now she’s documenting one of the most intimate moments of human life. That’s everything.
We’ve also had homemakers and stay-at-home mums who are now running their own photography businesses, shooting weddings, newborns, products. Each of those stories feels like a small revolution. It was a signal that the work our fellows are producing is being taken seriously far beyond our little corner of Chennai.
- What are the next goals for the Kanavu Fellowship? Anything in particular you’d like the initiative to aim for or achieve?
We’re at a really exciting juncture. In 2026, Kanavu is expanding beyond Chennai for the first time — taking the programme to Madurai, Theni, Rameshwaram, and Coimbatore. That means aiming to reach 100 women in a single year, across four cities, each with their own creative culture and stories waiting to be told.
Longer term, we want Kanavu to become a paid fellowship, where participants receive a stipend during the programme — because for many women, the ability to participate depends on not losing income for those months. We want to eventually expand across all four southern states. And we want every Kanavu graduate to have a genuine career pathway: freelancing, employment, or starting her own studio.
At its biggest, we want to build a generation of women visual storytellers from Tamil Nadu who get to shape their own narratives — and the region’s too.
- What’s one myth about women in photography you’d like to dispel?
That women aren’t interested in the technical side of photography. I’ve heard it said, often quite casually, that women ‘aren’t as technical’ with cameras or that they naturally gravitate toward softer, more domestic subjects.
Our fellows have shot documentaries about caste discrimination, made films about mothers battling cancer, photographed industrial landscapes, and covered birth in raw unflinching detail. The range and ambition of what they choose to photograph, once given the space to choose, is extraordinary.
The myth I’d most like to put to rest is simply this: that women aren’t interested. They absolutely are. Every application cycle, we see the proof. The interest has always been there. The real question is whether the industry is willing to show up and meet them.
- Finally, one piece of advice to aspiring women photographers?
Don’t wait until you feel ready. Seriously. The confidence comes from doing, not from preparing to do. Start shooting — on your phone, on a borrowed camera, on whatever you have access to right now. Every frame you take teaches you something a course cannot.
And find your people. Photography can feel like a solitary pursuit, but it doesn’t have to be. Seek out communities, reach out to photographers you admire, apply to programmes like Kanavu. The industry gets better when more of us are in it — and we genuinely, wholeheartedly want you here.
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