As part of the project to collect photographs for the Activities of Daily living
I first studied the route and timing of this man, who would come every day
on the roads of Outer Delhi-to Najafgarh.
Then I set my camera and waited for him in the morning fog.
ASA 100, F 16, Shutter -30
AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE-WILLIAM BLAKE
To see a world in a grain of sand,And a heaven in a wild flower,Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,And eternity in an hour.Suggested further readinghttp://www.artofeurope.com/blake/bla3.htm
The sonnet Ozymandias celebrates the anonymous sculptor and his artistic achievement, whilst Shelley imaginatively surveys the ruins of a bygone power to fashion a sinuous, compact sonnet spun from a traveller’s tale of far distant desert ruins. The lone and level sands stretching to the horizon perhaps suggest a resultant barrenness from a misuse of power where “nothing beside remains”.
OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.[2]
“I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate.” This was the personal philosophy of the great American photographer Ansel Adams whose birthday falls on February 20. He developed the zone system, a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print.
My photography teacher of School of Fototechnik Delhi, Mr.Tirtha Das Gupta,(TDG) LRPS, tells that there are three things in the modern world which one has to know if one has to survive. Cooking (he is not married), driving and the third one-an obvious answer coming from a great photographer-Photography.
When I joined his course(Sep 2005) I thought the third one-Photography- was a bit of an exaggeration. We can all survive in the modern world without photography. That is what I thought when I first heard this from TDG, sitting in his school of photography at Bhogal, New Delhi, waiting for the first lecture to start.
That was when I first heard of Ansel Adams, one of the pioneers of photography. Over the years I have realized that photography is a very useful way to grow as a human being, to not live a mechanical ‘animal’ existence, to refine one’s tastes and to be one with Beauty.
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Over the years, I have had the good fortune of knowing some masters first hand (they are not all famous-but that does not diminish them as artists) and also studied the works of some great photographers. One of them, studying whose work, approach to human life and the planet helped expand my own horizons beyond the office-to-house-house-to-office world, is Ansel Adams.
HUMANISTIC HOPES
There was a phase when Ansel Adams was deciding whether to become a musician or a photographer. His interactions with the photographer Paul Strand made him decide decisively towards photography.
Most creative people are strongly humanistic. Artists must be free to create and offer the products of their imagination and emotion to the world. They resent the restrictions of the unimaginative-the impulse to take, consume and produce little except material things, and to profit thereby.
Strand took active interest in the American Communist movement during the 1930s. His teacher at New York’s Ethical Culture School had been Lewis Hine, the great photographer who documented America’s new immigrants earlier in the century. Paul, following the lead of Hine and many other New York artists, was what is termed “leftist-leaning.” Paul fervently believed that pure socialism was the best hope for mankind.
The happy and optimistic Paul that Ansel Adams first knew in the 1930s became morose because he no longer believed in a healthy future for America, Strand moved to France in 1949. He chose not to live and work under the impending fascism toward which he believed America was headed. Luckily, he escaped the witch trials led by Joseph McCarthy that horribly scarred the lives of many American artists
CONVERSATION MOVEMENT.
A Long Shot-TDG and Amit Gangal
Ansel Adams was associated with leading artists, critics and was one of the founders of the Conversation movement, long before anyone had heard today’s vociferous debates about Global warming. In this sphere too, just as in the case of the impending disastrous policies which they foresaw, they had anticipated by several decades the coming decline.
In his association with the critic Beaumont Newhall with whom he established the first ever Department of Photography in the Museum of Modern Art he began to see how the reconstruction of a work of art in terms of its time, its development and function, and its relations to the history of art became in a very positive way, a creative expression in itself. In this too there is a lesson for all, in whatever walk of life we engage in.
He ends his Autobiography with the following words-talking about the human spirit.
The only things in my life that compatibly exist with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit. After eighty years, I scan a long perspective. I think of a mantra of Gaelic origin given me fifty years ago by Ella Young. It echoes everything I believe:
I know that I am one with beauty
And that my comrades are one
Let our souls be mountains,
Let our spirits be stars,
Let our hearts be worlds.
The apprehensions of the great photographer Paul Strand who had an important influence on Ansel Adams at a decisive phase of this artistic career are probably truer today. With these lines of thinking it does not take much guessing to know what artists like Paul Strand or Ansel Adams would have said about the present day American policies. They had foreseen this impending doom by decades. Artists have a higher sensitivity.
WALKS AROUND MALTA..2009
Manwel Dimech-1860 to 1921
LANDSCAPES
COMINO- 2010
COMINO 2011
GOZO-2007
SWEIQI MALTA 2011 The valley between Swieqi and San Gjwann..On the way to the Indian Community Centre, Malta
RAMLA BAY FROM CALYPSO CAVE-GOZO-2007 Gozo-Mediterranean Landscapes
KHADRA TRIPOLI 2009 A walk -Khadra forest-Tripoli
TRIPOLI MORNINGS-2006 ASAI AL HAMRA REFLECTIONS
GHADAMES OLD CITY-2004 LIBYA
SAHARA SUNSETS-2004
WADI AL KUF-EASTERN LIBYA 2006
SAHARA SUNSETS 2004
RAS AL HILAL EASTERN LIBYA 2006 Exploring the Libyan Coastline
HARIDWAR-SUNRISE FROM MANSA DEVI 2003 JUNE
HARIDWAR – GANGA FROM MANSA DEVI 2003 Walks that help me think: Sunrise from Mansa Devi Haridwar June 2003
LANDOUR -MUSSOORIE 2006 Jesus Died for our sins-Cross in Landour, on way to Lal Tibba, Mussoorie. If one has a project of “Family Magazine” and Joint journal then such photographs can give a very interesting base. This cross in Landour is seen while walking to Lal Tibba, past the house where the great writer Ruskin Bond lives. It is a pilgrimage to go to these hills.
RISHIKESH-RAM JHULA 2006 A Poem by the Ganga-Rishikesh: Is poetry just for pleasure or a source of moral instruction.Aristotle used to believe that Poetry is a greater moral instructor than history as poetry deals with the universal, while history deals with the particular P
BILU KEDAR-SRINAGAR 2011 The priest here knows three generations of our family. One of our family members -a young 16 year rationalist challenges these rituals. I quickly revised some definitions of Theism with him
PORT CREDIT MISSISSAUGA 2013
NIAGARA WALKS 2013 JAN Table Rock-Niagara region
NIAGARA WALKS OCT 2014
NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
EVENING WALK IN ROME-2011-NOVEMBER
Approaching the Colosseum-The Flavian Amphitheatre-Built during reign of Vespasian AD 72-80
Foro Cesar-Forum of Cesar-Built by Julius Cesar in 51-41 BC after the conquest of Gaul
View from Top of Spanish Steps-Rome
Rome-view from Spanish steps
Foro Cesar..Forum of Cesar . Built in 51-41 BC. by Julius Cesar after the conquest of Gaulough the Eternal City-Rome
Night approach to the Colosseum-The Flavian Amphitheatre-Built from AD 72 to AD 80 during the reign of Vespasian
Fontana Trevi
City father of the Eternal City-Gazing down through Time
AFRICAN CHOIR – These brothers are now target of racist attacks
MUSEUM IMAGING
ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM- 2013
ROM..100 Years..Every object has a story
ROM TORONTO-EGYPT GALLERY
ROM-EVERY OBJECT HAS A STORY
CHINA 4000 years ago-ROM
ROMAN GALLERY-ROM
WALKS -TURKEY
HAGIA SOPHIA The domes have spectacular light and shade effects
Sogukcesme street
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS-brought back fond memories of friends, family from Balkans who played similar instruments
Blue Mosque-Sultanahmet
On a leaf
Peaceful cat in Cafe in Sogukcesme street, Sultanahmet-Istanbul
RUMELI FORT.built by Mehmet 11. Nice sea breeze and views, carrying many currents of centuries
Mosaic. The faces of St John and Virgin Mary are said to be serious as they are asking Jesus to forgive.
WEEPING COLUMN many interesting legends associated. No 30 of audio guide, on the right of the ramp leading to the upper galleries
Turkish countryside, on way from Eskisehir to Istanbul
Returned at Night, to take a different perspective of the same monument. Night photography has its charms
Whirling dervishes
Mevlana Museum, the shrine of Jalaludin Rumi and other important figures of this spiritual movement. The relations between Asia Minor, Constantinople, Europe come alive through the many exhibits related to books, music. The rose garden around the museum is a particularly charming place to sit in the winter sun.
Prashant Bhatt's notes 