He grew up with an innate love for books and has now spent two decades in the publishing industry but even then Anant Padmanabhan, vice president, sales, Penguin, chose to tell the story through pictures. He pays an ode to the publishing industry by putting together an exhibition of photographs called “Calcutta, Walking in the City’ that starts this Thursday in the Capital. “If I wasn’t a photographer, I would have written a 5000 word essay but it would have lacked the intensity of a picture. Sometimes my pictures tell you things that I didn’t intend to,” says the self taught photographer who discovered his passion for the medium in his early 30s and has worked on various projects since, both personal and professional.
The 30 black-and-white frames capturing the Swapna Printing Works Pvt. Ltd in Kolkata indeed hold in them tales for anybody eager to listen. Nostalgia rules this body of work made at a printing press which is loaded with history. Founded in 1978, it is where first books by international publishers coming to India were published. Anant says that there is certain romanticism to book publishing and his photographsare evocative of that romance and charm. It was his deep rooted love for books combined with his fascination for Kolkata that took him to Swapna Printing Press, highlighting Kolkata’s role in the publishing industry in modern times. He had first visited the place in 1998 and felt the urge to go back. It was hard to forget the feel of fresh paper, the sights and smells of a printing press. He revisited the press earlier this year with the intention of sharing with the world how books are produced and how they come through.
Though the pictures don’t reveal the process in any chronological order, a strong narrative runs through them.
His early work has been featured on and within books with Penguin, Rough Guides, a travel guidebooks publisher and in a Youth Reach book on the relationship between trees and cities. Some of his work has also featured in SOS Ladakh, an exhibition for charity organized by NDTV Lifestyle.
(“Calcutta – Walking in the City” will be held at Experimental Art Gallery, India Habitat Centre, from November 1 to 10)
