Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai flipped the script at Raipur Press Club’s photo festival, stepping behind the camera to spotlight the state’s working photojournalists.

RAIPUR, Aug 23 — Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai turned the camera on the press corps on Sunday, stepping behind the lens to photograph the very photojournalists who track his daily itinerary. The impromptu role reversal capped the closing ceremony of ‘Drishya Samvad 2026’, a five-day photojournalism exhibition organised by the Raipur Press Club to mark World Photography Day. Sai didn’t treat the gallery as a routine political stop. He spent hours tracing his own political evolution across decades of raw photo archives, from his early days ploughing agricultural fields to his first legislative victory.

And the candid retrospective revealed a deeply personal side of the state’s top executive. Pausing before a vintage print from his first term as an MLA, Sai chuckled as he told reporters about the bespoke safari suit he’d specially tailored for his political debut. Another frame captured him behind a wooden plough, prompting him to share memories of rural life that modern governance rarely leaves time for. Photographs aren’t just decorative souvenirs for future generations; they’re hard historical evidence of how a society evolves. Isn’t that the real test of documentary journalism?

A single photograph doesn’t need words to expose an uncomfortable truth.

Sai praised the working photojournalists who routinely brave hostile assignments to capture defining moments of regional history. The festival, which launched on August 19, didn’t just showcase political power players; it displayed an exhaustive body of work spanning Chhattisgarh’s fragile environment, indigenous culture, and street-level public grievances. Press Club President Mohan Tiwari and General Secretary Gaurav Sharma led the closing delegation alongside festival convenor Deepak Pandey and senior executives Dilip Sahu and Dinesh Yadu. They’ve built an open platform that lets veteran photographers train young talent outside corporate media filters.

So the administration is urging the state’s youth to look closely at what these lenses capture. Sai congratulated the participants and pushed for more independent cultural spaces where photojournalists can present unvarnished reality without editorial interference. When the powerful must look directly into the lenses that have recorded their entire careers, they can’t hide behind polished press releases.