What I Talk About When I Talk About Photography

What I love about photography is that it is essentially a solitary art. It is entirely about how you look at your surroundings, how you perceive it and how you interact with it. Photography for me is a meditative experience; once I have the instrument in my hand, be it a camera or a mobile phone, it becomes an extension of my consciousness; its technicality becomes immaterial, but its impact immortal. As I look for the image, I feel my senses getting heightened; my eyes act differently as I see the light dancing, how it casts shadows and highlights faces, how it changes moods and creates a world of its own. It is almost an out of body experience where you detach yourself from the real world and immerse yourself in this labyrinth made of images, made of decisive moments, moments where all the elements are in perfect sync and they come together to tell a story. When I take the metro, I feel like a predator looking for my subject, looking for a moment. I observe not only with my eyes but with my ears listening and anticipating a moment worth capturing. I never sit; I always walk from one compartment to the other, sometimes like an epiphany it happens; I can see the elements coming together, and I know this is the moment I press the button. And at that moment, I take a slice out of reality; from a mere observer, I become a creator. With time, I have realized that this act of creation liberates us in this world of consumerism. We are often consuming things in our daily lives, whether having lunch or watching movies or travelling somewhere. We are essentially consuming things through our senses which already exist in nature. But the act of creation empowers us; it gives us this individuality that we have created is entirely our own, and this feeling is most profound for me in photography. The act of creation is what liberates us and also frustrates us. When we create something unique, something true to our vision there; it makes us giddy in our head. The happiness is visceral often transmuting into positive energy affecting everyone around us. It is not very difficult to understand why a mother clenches on to her newborn or why a child holds on dearly to his or her paintings; those unabated ramblings on paper often become a child’s most prized possessions. This profound sense of individual impact, this god-like feeling of creation, matters more than the public validation of the piece of art. Public validation does help but it is not what artists are often running after. Photography has instilled in me a subtle sense of self-confidence. As I walk out of my house to take the metro, I tell myself that I will find a moment that defines my day; a moment that reminds of this same mundane metro ride that I have taken a thousand times but also a moment that is so unique that it can’t be created again. With every passing moment, the situation changes and even if the scene remains the same, you cannot photograph the past.

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