Picture this!
You don’t need to be a linguist to appreciate the language of a photograph.
To be touched by a good photograph, all you need is to have your heart at the right place. The picture of a frail, old couple, holding each other is enough to melt your heart. And the one in which a child is playfully sitting on his mother’s back, as she lies down as a part of her puja, instantly makes you smile. These photographs are worth a million words, literally.
Around 251 such photographs by 70 photographers were a part of the Big Picture, a photo exhibition organised by Working News Cameram-en’s Association (WNCA) at Lalit Kala Academy recently.
“A large number of good photos filed by photojournalists remain unused because of space constraint. We bring out these photos here for the world to see,” says photographer Sondeep Shankar, founder member and general secretary, WNCA.
The exhibition, which is a bi-annual feature of the organisation, set up in 1978, also aims to give opportunity to young photographers to share a podium with the veterans. So, on display were the works of Raghu Rai, Prashant Panjiar and S. Paul among others. “It is only the photograph that is of interest to a viewer, but often for a photographer, the stories associated with the picture are equally important,” photographer S.N. Sinha shared, as he got spoke about his black and white photograph of the world’s toughest terrain, the Siachen glacier, shot years back from a helicopter.
Photographer Bunny Smith spoke about how he got the photo of the “Tibetan protester, in flames”. “I had gone to cover some other news story, when during a protest march this young man set himself ablaze. Unfortunately, he died on the spot. It all happened within a few minutes,” he narrates.
The Internet revolution has given photographers a wider global space to showcase their works, but exhibitions retain their importance, says Sondeep, adding, “Onscreen everything looks good, but the actual technical detailing like colour gradation and graining is what one can feel in a print photograph.”
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