Documentary photographer Peter Bialobrzeski categorically dismisses the idea of shooting the famed Chinese nets, the city’s most celebrated landmark, for his book of photographs on Kochi. A clichéd image, he says and one that does not fit into his practice. In the last three years, the artist-photographer has brought out a series of photo books, diaries, on cities, capturing the extant realities and eschewing platitudes. His first book Cairo Dairy delicately catches the times and mood of everyday life in a city in the throes of political change. The images reflect the anxiety. Some of the other cities whose urban nuances have been delineated are Athens, Taipei, his hometown Wolfsburg, Mumbai, Osaka, Yangon and Bangkok.
“The diary is very specific, because the semiotics differs with every city,” says Peter who has been to India 14 times, to Kochi four times and has yet to take a call whether Ernakulam will be a part of the book. As of now it is Fort Kochi and Mattancherry that are subjects of his lens.
Peter indulges in thorough visual research before embarking on the project and treats his frames like painting. The compositions are tight, the editing is slick and yet the narrative unassuming.
“I try to frame complex situations that feel well composed. There are two stages, the photographic process, where something just feels right in terms of semiotics within the image and a ‘compository’ balance that appears in the frame. Second, the editing process where the photographs become ‘material’ to be sequenced without creating redundancies, but being forceful enough to make a specific point about the place I am working on,” he explains.
A look through the pages of the diaries will reveal that Peter is not an officious storyteller, rather a subtle presenter allowing the viewer to be a flaneur. The diaries have along with photographs his “meditations and observations” that touch the social and the political. “I studied politics and sociology before I studied art,” says Peter who teaches art at the University of Bremen.
In Athens Diary he attempted to grasp the crisis, the Beirut Diary drawing in a sense of danger.
This sensorial element he compares to the literary “stream of consciousness”, guiding the viewer naturally through the book making them a part of the same vibe. This he does using colour and form, as leitmotifs, “which leads you naturally from one page to the other,” he says. For such ease of movement he shoots in similar light, early morning between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. and early evening around the same time using the 35mm shift lens.
A conspicuous feature in his photographs, in this series, is the lack of drama. The absence, plaintive direct images, telling the story as it is, becomes a powerful tool, leaving the frames sophisticated, democratic and complex. The beauty and power rises from the stark narration.
Of his photography, he says, “I’d like to be part of a cultural dialogue. I see my photography as cultural practice as much related to art as to literature or music. I negotiate my relationship with the outside world through my images. Maybe the “documentary style” is a way of taming and understanding a complex world, in which I might go mad, if I’d not have a tool to deal with.”
And so photography gives him meaning to negotiate a world beset with complexities. The diaries stoke curiosity and make great archival content. Kochi through Peter’s perspective will offer a new fresh look, of images- mundane, quotidian, overlooked and some that have never caught the eye. They may trap the slow and the swift changes that the city is experiencing and the image that may not be missed, after all, maybe the Chinese nets that have always hogged the limelight.
The series on diaries is published by The Velvet Cell, and Kochi Diary is in collaboration with Kochi Muziris Biennale and Gutenberg Institute
