Are they photos or are they actually paintings? That’s the impression you get when you see the photos on display at the exhibition ‘Aadu Kadicha Elakal’ that is on at the Museum Auditorium till May 18.
S. Sudayadas, a city-based freelance animator and photographer, has framed all the 44 photographs on display to resemble paintings, for such is the vibrancy, colour, and life in each frame. The two shots of leafy branches of trees, for example, will be hard to differentiate from intricate pen art.
“It’s purely by accident; I did not set out to make the photos look like paintings. Maybe it’s because I am trained in painting (from the College of Fine Arts). I have a keen visual sense, I guess. Then again, the exhibition itself hinges on the theme ‘by accident.’ All the photos just happened and reflects things that caught my eye at that particular moment,” says Sudayadas.
Like all good paintings, these are photos that make you think and feel, such as a portrait of an old widow - each wrinkle makes you wonder at the tragedies that have befallen her. Or that of an elderly Muslim man sipping his sulaimani, wisdom etched on his face. Another one features a boat full of fishermen cresting a wave as they negotiate the choppy sea in search of a bountiful catch. Yet another is a shot of three old men sitting on a rocky outcrop, framed against the stark beauty of a scrub landscape. Such is the poignancy of the shot that it immediately takes one back to a time when technology had not yet interrupted interactions with others.
All of Sudayadas’ shots, though, bring out the magnificence of nature. “I enjoy nature photography, particularly the extremities of landscape of my native Palakkad,” he says. Often his photos are a play of light and colour, with some even bordering on minimalist. A sparse arecanut grove caught in the moonlight and another inky shot of a grove inundated with water, two shots of dense forests, mists creeping through the trees, a macro shot of two dragonflies mating, the trunk of an elephant emerging out of a olive green pond, are examples of this.
Also, the sea and the setting sun appears to be another favourite landscape for the photographer. In fact, there are several shots of these shots – of people walking along a beach, the light from the setting sun making the waves shimmer; others enjoying the evening at the pier; the sun framed through a jhumka; the sun caught through the pillars of a pier… “I often go to the beaches in the city. They are a big inspiration for the photographer in me.”
