040 is the code to dial Hyderabad and 040 is the also the dial code for Hamburg in Germany. This isn’t a trivia, but the programme under which some Indians from Hyderabad visited Hamburg. In Goethe Zentrum, the observations and images clicked by poet Sridala Swamy and senior journalist Serish Nanisetti, show the other side of the two cities. And those minute observations in huge structures captured by Serish and Sridala are now on display at the ‘Same Other’ exhibition at Goethe Zentrum in the city. The exhibition can be best described as a lensman and a journalist’s keen observation of things unusual and what might miss the eye of others. “It is a juxtaposition of images of two cities and two cultures. As I am from Hyderabad, I saw Hamburg like a tourist and then realised the similarities; I tried to find more and managed to find more,” explains Serish.
At least that’s how Serish has presented his photo compositions. His packaging of photos is self explanatory. But there is more than the 040 programme that made the journalist- photographer link the two cities, “I saw an Afghan man baking tandoor roti and after a short walk ate doner kebab and realised how the cities are similar in some ways. When I began to hunt for similarities, I found there were too many,” he explains at the exhibition.
Sridala on the other looked at ‘familiar.’ She related to mosques, people who looked like Asians and “the word ‘tamilar’ reminded me of home wherever or whatever that is,” she says. His compositions and angles of the subject are easy to appreciate but make an onlooker wonder about the photographer’s eye for details. Serish’s composition of an angle of the Hussain Sagar lake and lake Alster and then the Park Hyatt and Chilehaus leaves no doubt that the two cities are indeed the ‘same other’.