The first hills appeared on the horizon as we aproached Kalka, the gateway of the Himalayas.
Kalka is a typically chaotic and dirty town, renown for being the starting point of the toy train to Simla. Having our own roads, we were just passing through...
...until I saw something interesting in a roadside shop. A small girl was tending to her grandfather and I immediately felt drawn into this scene of intimate tenderness amidst all the filth, noise and chaos.
Skirting a cow I approached the shop and leant over a table loaded with underwear and socks for sale, all dirty from street filth and exhaust fumes, wishing my 24-70 were just a little longer.
While I was vacillating whether just peeking inside into their intimacy and keep them undisturbed or say "hello" for politeness' sake, the girl realized I was there and turned around. Oups - she was not a little girl as I thought but a midget.
It was her truly innocent charm that cast a spell on me, though, topped with the happy contentment on the old tailor's face. To me, that was pure love although I could only guess what their relation was. Photography-wise it was a tricky situation. I wanted to frame them with their environment, to include the old Singer and the word "TAILOR" to the right, but that would have made them less dominate the picture. Focusing closer, the corner of the tablet protruded into the frame. A flaw I had to live with I guess... any arrangement or instruction would have caused the tender moment to disappear.
The good news was that the neighboring shopkeepers seemed to genuinely respect and take care of them. One of them, a Sikh, literally ordered me to show them the pics on the LCD and when I told him "I'll give them a much better gift" he asked, "what? MONEY???" with an expression on his face that promised nothing good. However, it was my Fuji Instax I reached for and the polaroid did its magic once again, making them perfectly happy. In return I got a kiss as a good-bye present.
On we drew towards Manali, or better to Kasauli where we hoped to arrive before nightfall. We stopped occasionally for tee & cigarettes at a dhaba, a roadside shack selling basic food and chai, which was good opportunity to get more acquainted to my new 24-70/2,8L. I received this magnificent lens only a few daysbefore departure and soon realized how much better it was than the 24-105/4L I used last year. My piece of last year was obviously flawed since I could never get it to focus accurately but the new lens performed extremely well. I missed image stabilization though because my hands aren't as steady as they used to be and it's very easy to get a photo blurred at 2,8, especially with such a heavy lens. Popping up ISO to 400-800 and faster shutter speed helped to eliminate this risk, and shooting RAWs made it possible to reduce the noise to a decent level afterwards. Another trick was to raise my left arm to my chest and lay the camera on it instead of holding it by my hands.
On the road, I tried to do more of my favorite juxtaposition: wide-angle shots of people with their mountainous land in the background.
But it was shortly before Manali where I found treasure. Another small dhaba, run by two girls. The dirty, smoke-stained wall was a perfect background for portraits in itself, and the younger girl with her big eyes, resembling dark diamonds, was just the perfect model for a close-up portrait. My little model liked to pose but her older sister disapproved and despite trying to display my best maners, the situation got tense. We quickly finished our chai and left. Two lonely girls alone in a roadside dhaba - can't entirely blame them for being a little paranoid. I asked Soni why she was scared. He said, locals think I will sell their pictures for lots of money (I wish that was true!) or worse, show the pictures to bad people who then will come and kidnap the girls. What could I say? At this point I was already believing what Susan Sontag said about photography being a form of rape and violence, and kept pondering over this until we arrived in a foggy, rainy Manali.
I stumbled upon another inspiring portrait today, this time by Andre du Plessis from sunny South Africa. To me it is a step beyond diptych or split technique, because he managed to take two photographs in one single shot. First, we see a portrait with superb tones:
...and as if this wouldn't be enough, the photo develops into an emotional-environmental portrait on the right side. That's what I mean with taking one shot and getting two. It could be actually three: far left, single portrait; center, emotional; far right, environmental. The little devil inside makes me longing for something to fill in the space on the right, like another figure in the background or some interesting detail of environment, but perfectionism spoils all the fun. Bottomline: terrific concept, for me another lesson learned. I need to ask him next time how he produces such delicate low-keyish tones on his portraits of dark-skinned models - quite challenging!
My mind keeps coming back again and again to this powerful photograph. So, today I opened the Bible (meaning Taschen's fabulous "20th Century Photography") to read more about Arnold Newman. It says, "environmental portait" - developed by Newman - is the art of including in the portrait objects characteristic of the portrayed person, thereby associating the subject with his work and with the world of ideas. (I think Newman didn't invent it, he only was the first to turn it into one's particular style. Just to mention Cartier-Bresson who used it as well, even a decade before Newman changed from documentary to portrait photography in the 1940s, and XIXth century portraiture was also environmental in this sense of meaning). It's like pizza actually, you don't need to invent it but you must make it in a way that's both new and outstanding. I tried to get beneath the layers of Newman's photograph, partly trying to understand what Taschen meant by "connecting the subject with the world of ideas". First, it is a fabulous BW shot consisting only of three tones (black, grey, white) which almost gives the impression of an abstract painting. It is the black piano only that bring dynamism into the picture; if Stravinsky wouldn't sit there, we could easily mistake it for a purely geometrical shape. This alone could make it a great artwork, but there's the subject. Stravinsky is looking small compared to the huge black shape of the piano. He looks relaxed and void of any emotion, almost bored. From here on, we have two options. (In Hungarian, we call this útelázgazgolódás.) One is: the portrait gets its power from the contradiction between the seemingly unimportant artist and the huge, dynamic, powerful shape of the piano which symbolizes his music. Hence, the photo is about Stravinsky's music. He's only there to make sure we don't think it's about, let's say, Béla Bartók. The other is: for Stravinsky, his art is more important than himself, telling us that he is a reserved and modest man (could you imagine a portrait showing a small Dali and a huge painting by him? I hardly think so...). Thus, the photo is about Stravinsky. This is what I thought since I posted the photo a few days ago but today I discovered another layer beyond abstract beauty and symbolism. To me, the piano looks like a lion, opening wide his mouth and Stravinsky looks like a lion-tamer in the circus putting his mouth into it - no big gestures needed because he rules the beast. And Stravinsky's music can be like a beast - just listen to this from 6.00 onwards. So, my path of understanding this photograph is: the piano reminds to a lion, the lion stands for ferociousness and power, and it is this association with the beast that leads to recognize the same ferociousness and power in Stravinsky's music. Newman doesn't show the music, he only provides us with a symbol from which we can discover the idea of his music. And that's what I find ingenious - Newman lets us discover this music, the soul of the artist, by following our own imagination and associations. He doesn't show all this directly, like Cartier-Bresson in the famous Giacometti shot (also a masterpiece of environmental portraiture but I prefer Newman's subtlety). In the photograph, Stravinsky's lack of emotions becomes a symbol for mastering the music - not fighting it like Beethoven, not doing playful magic like Mozart, not meditating over it like Bach. He simply rules over it. Of course, it was good that about 20 years ago, on a long train trip from Budapest to Lenti, I read his biography and hence know that he was a reserved guy, not devoid of humour but taking music deadly seriously without making a big fuss about it; he was a star, but didn't consider himself one. I don't have the patience and time anymore to read such biographies but fortunately there are such photographs which tell volumes.
Kalka is a typically chaotic and dirty town, renown for being the starting point of the toy train to Simla. Having our own roads, we were just passing through...
...until I saw something interesting in a roadside shop. A small girl was tending to her grandfather and I immediately felt drawn into this scene of intimate tenderness amidst all the filth, noise and chaos.
Skirting a cow I approached the shop and leant over a table loaded with underwear and socks for sale, all dirty from street filth and exhaust fumes, wishing my 24-70 were just a little longer.
While I was vacillating whether just peeking inside into their intimacy and keep them undisturbed or say "hello" for politeness' sake, the girl realized I was there and turned around. Oups - she was not a little girl as I thought but a midget.
It was her truly innocent charm that cast a spell on me, though, topped with the happy contentment on the old tailor's face. To me, that was pure love although I could only guess what their relation was. Photography-wise it was a tricky situation. I wanted to frame them with their environment, to include the old Singer and the word "TAILOR" to the right, but that would have made them less dominate the picture. Focusing closer, the corner of the tablet protruded into the frame. A flaw I had to live with I guess... any arrangement or instruction would have caused the tender moment to disappear.
The good news was that the neighboring shopkeepers seemed to genuinely respect and take care of them. One of them, a Sikh, literally ordered me to show them the pics on the LCD and when I told him "I'll give them a much better gift" he asked, "what? MONEY???" with an expression on his face that promised nothing good. However, it was my Fuji Instax I reached for and the polaroid did its magic once again, making them perfectly happy. In return I got a kiss as a good-bye present.
On we drew towards Manali, or better to Kasauli where we hoped to arrive before nightfall. We stopped occasionally for tee & cigarettes at a dhaba, a roadside shack selling basic food and chai, which was good opportunity to get more acquainted to my new 24-70/2,8L. I received this magnificent lens only a few daysbefore departure and soon realized how much better it was than the 24-105/4L I used last year. My piece of last year was obviously flawed since I could never get it to focus accurately but the new lens performed extremely well. I missed image stabilization though because my hands aren't as steady as they used to be and it's very easy to get a photo blurred at 2,8, especially with such a heavy lens. Popping up ISO to 400-800 and faster shutter speed helped to eliminate this risk, and shooting RAWs made it possible to reduce the noise to a decent level afterwards. Another trick was to raise my left arm to my chest and lay the camera on it instead of holding it by my hands.
On the road, I tried to do more of my favorite juxtaposition: wide-angle shots of people with their mountainous land in the background.
But it was shortly before Manali where I found treasure. Another small dhaba, run by two girls. The dirty, smoke-stained wall was a perfect background for portraits in itself, and the younger girl with her big eyes, resembling dark diamonds, was just the perfect model for a close-up portrait.
My little model liked to pose but her older sister disapproved and despite trying to display my best maners, the situation got tense. We quickly finished our chai and left. Two lonely girls alone in a roadside dhaba - can't entirely blame them for being a little paranoid. I asked Soni why she was scared. He said, locals think I will sell their pictures for lots of money (I wish that was true!) or worse, show the pictures to bad people who then will come and kidnap the girls. What could I say? At this point I was already believing what Susan Sontag said about photography being a form of rape and violence, and kept pondering over this until we arrived in a foggy, rainy Manali.
