Re Contextualizing the found objects: STILL LIFE,
Starting my career as an artist and a painter and walking through the life of a photojournalist has opened up two sides of my personality, that of a lover of aesthetic notions of beauty and fine art and that of a curious observer and recorder of life around me- an artist and a photojournalist. Thus the ‘Camera’ became both a link as well as the tool. It became my expression and response to the worlds inside and outside me. It has been more than twenty years since Camera became a companion, an affinity and the most constant in my journeys, shifts and changes of life!
Photographic journalism is about seeking the outside, recording, documenting and being at places where the ‘happening’ is. It is about the obvious, recording for the world and being an eye for the world, which I continue to enjoy and explore. However, my current works seek a parallel to this apparent reality of spot journalism. These works are about stepping a bit aside having the obvious and finding the drama that is happening there. I found a value and interest in recording people as they are, in their daily life, outside the frame of the news lenses, which has equal potential to explore. As a context, it is the parallel of the apparent. It is a ‘no news’ yet very much there.
The other set of works which partially evolve around objects such as statues, cut outs and scare crows are extended notions of the concept of still life, yet a search in terms of signs, images and its meanings. This is also an extension of the self as an artist and a painter. Though these objects/ images are often found around our everyday life, they differ and re contextualizes themselves within our active and animated world in many ways.