Of all that is in between
and all that is outside
there is something that belongs
to neither/nor
in which there's nothing at all
As transience seeps
back through hot sand
and removes all traces
of that which was
what matters is what's lost
what is there is not all
a single echo - For? For?
And time witnesses
patiently, as we fill it up again
while lighting a candle and blowing out
27.9.09
26.9.09
An Inverted Reality
When laughter dies an early death, what remains is a menacing silence. But, a picture makes no sound.
Watching the City of Photos, I have begun to see the camera as a box full of contradictions. It is said that it offers possibilities, but I think it offers equal possibilities to those in the frame and to the eye behind the artificially enhanced lens. I almost wonder; woudn’t the city also want a place, in a silent frame, that hides all the noise and reveals only its ageing landscape; as it bears the brunt of its civilization waiting to be lost in an outdated digital frame. Perhaps that’s what the director intended to say when she exclaims- “it’s as if the city never existed except in these frames”
When I raise these questions I am overcome by a feeling similar to that of early photographers who captured light in a box time and again, knowing that it won’t last.
What are we to decipher from an image that speaks of both a dream in the backdrop; and a barefoot reality staring right into the flash of light? Is this contrast funny? Or, is it sad? Is it a philosophical question or an answer to a pair of dying eyes that found immortality only after death?
As the camera whirrs into life, what we capture is an inverted image that forms inside it. It is beauty in it ugliest form. We laugh as we can’t relate to the fact of a skinny, more rib than muscle-show, twenty something young man, evidently on drugs, posing like Hrithik Roshan [or was it Salman Khan]; waiting to be captured in a frame that offers spotlight even if it is for a fraction of a second. And to stop that laughter we need a photograph of famine victims, huddled like a family, looking ridiculous with a colourful backdrop of a majestic tomb of desire, to take us to the gravity of this ostracizing reality? Could we not see the striking similarity between the hungry ribcages of eyes that searched for food and others that sought identity? After compiling lives full of chaos in an orderly fashion, in beautiful luxurious albums, have we failed to notice that while some choose to get clicked for a different life in the frame; others have stopped living outside the frame?
Maybe we assume ourselves to be the inverted reality of an image that is being formed elsewhere, waiting to be developed, while we wait to be washed out like a negative.
Watching the City of Photos, I have begun to see the camera as a box full of contradictions. It is said that it offers possibilities, but I think it offers equal possibilities to those in the frame and to the eye behind the artificially enhanced lens. I almost wonder; woudn’t the city also want a place, in a silent frame, that hides all the noise and reveals only its ageing landscape; as it bears the brunt of its civilization waiting to be lost in an outdated digital frame. Perhaps that’s what the director intended to say when she exclaims- “it’s as if the city never existed except in these frames”
When I raise these questions I am overcome by a feeling similar to that of early photographers who captured light in a box time and again, knowing that it won’t last.
What are we to decipher from an image that speaks of both a dream in the backdrop; and a barefoot reality staring right into the flash of light? Is this contrast funny? Or, is it sad? Is it a philosophical question or an answer to a pair of dying eyes that found immortality only after death?
As the camera whirrs into life, what we capture is an inverted image that forms inside it. It is beauty in it ugliest form. We laugh as we can’t relate to the fact of a skinny, more rib than muscle-show, twenty something young man, evidently on drugs, posing like Hrithik Roshan [or was it Salman Khan]; waiting to be captured in a frame that offers spotlight even if it is for a fraction of a second. And to stop that laughter we need a photograph of famine victims, huddled like a family, looking ridiculous with a colourful backdrop of a majestic tomb of desire, to take us to the gravity of this ostracizing reality? Could we not see the striking similarity between the hungry ribcages of eyes that searched for food and others that sought identity? After compiling lives full of chaos in an orderly fashion, in beautiful luxurious albums, have we failed to notice that while some choose to get clicked for a different life in the frame; others have stopped living outside the frame?
Maybe we assume ourselves to be the inverted reality of an image that is being formed elsewhere, waiting to be developed, while we wait to be washed out like a negative.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)