Frames from a life...

Ever so often these days, I come across these points of views which completely echo mine. Thoughts which I have had at some point in the past but never bothered to remember and note. Feelings that I have had but never quite understood. Ideas and opinions on subjects which I have always had with a degree of uncertainty and circumspection. And then I chance upon these writings or people who act like your sounding board and there is a connection, no matter how brief or how transient, there is a connection, that gives me a degree of certainty in my thoughts and ideas…. And ever so often, the other person manages to express my views in a way far more beautiful and poignant that I would have in a long long time….

The following is one such text I chanced upon the very next day after writing my "on the spur of the moment" blog on photography. My fascination with pictures has been for long and I have always had very romantic reasons in liking photography. While I did put across my thoughts on the subject in my previous blog, this article in the Sunday edition of the Hindu made me jump with joy. It said all I wanted to tell in beautiful prose ! Confirmation bias someone would say. Maybe ? But the fact of the matter is that these nuggets of thought floating around in the universe, come to you at times you are ready for them. And I find that order in stochasticity and randomness rather appealing to let go.

Anyways, I put forth here some of the text from this article with the footnote that I hope I can write with greater fluidity with lesser effort in times to come.

"A Story in Each frame

Life is a series of stories that could be broken down into a sequence of images that could run fast enough to seem like continuous spiral of activity without the punctuations of blank spaces. Each of these images can be captured, memorized by the mind and often is, only the finest details blurred over by time, age and eyes that may not be quick enough to fix them for eternity. And what the ye can see, the camera can freeze, too, each photograph keeping a log of what happened, where, when and how.

A really good photographer can also steal a little bit of that feeling, the emotion, the soul of that particular moment in time - in fact, in many cultures, a photograph is dreaded, sometimes even forbidden, since it is believed to take away a tiny slice of the soul, perhaps even the life, of the subject being photographed. But for the viewer, a photographic image tells a story, or a bit of one, leaving the rest for the imagination to conjure up and embellish. In telling that story, photography, once considered to be merely a way of capturing a moment, be it as a family portrait, or a facet of breaking news, gradually became an art form - a creative story telling, fiction perhaps - or a means of documentation - a biography or a record of life and its living.

The images tell more stories than their subjects would perhaps have imagined. The unsaid says more than that which is spoken of, conveying mood, relationships and affections in that one snap in time. And there is history in each frame - culture, tradition and age as reflected in the way the women pose, the clothes they wear and how they are worn, the furniture, even the pictures on the walls, Each has a special story, its meaning and interpretation left to the viewer. "

- Excerpts from the Hindu Magazine, Sunday, 22nd August 2010
An article by Ramya Sarma

And as the photographer in the article says - "If I could write, I would not be a photographer"…
I would perhaps say that if I could paint and write, I would not be a photographer.