“Every person photographed has a story” is howartist K. R Sunil sums up his ongoing show at the Kochi Muziris Biennale, 2016, at Aspinwall House.
His ‘Vanishing Life-Worlds’ is a photographic series that captures the commercial and social lives of the residents of Ponnani. Why Ponnani? Sunil grew up in Kodungaloor, a town that seems similar to Ponnani yet very different, as Ponnani unlike Kodungaloor has been untouched by modernisation. The people’s choice to lead a traditional lifestyle made them an appealing subject for the photographer.
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His work is showcased such that every visitor to the venue gets to see the photos easily. The display is eye-catching. One side of a long corridor in Block B, in the venue, is entirely devoted to the work. Visitors get a chance to view a fascinating array of characters and observe a quaint society through Sunil’s aesthetic lens. Through a visual medium, he tells you a story of an old fashioned and a diverse town. If you are lucky, he will regale you with some captivating tales of the people and places in the images. Plucked from obscurity, their uniqueness has provided them with fame, albeit in an unusual form. Amongst his collections, is the picture of the last bullock cart driver in the town, whose business had recently died a natural death and sustenance was no longer available for his bulls. The other people he deemed interesting enough to immortalise include a chemist named Abu Bakr who gives away medicines for free, a sailor who has an abundance of stories from his time at the sea and a man who, once upon a time, was travelling the world and now, after giving up all his money, lives a solitary life. The cream of the crop, according to Sunil, is a man who spent seven years in jail. While taking his portrait, the man promised to tell him his life story. Sunil decided to turn this into a photo story and scheduled a second meeting. However, a week later the man passed away. Yet in a strange twist, he lives on, forever frozen in a frame. We also see a church with an unusual architecture and a derelict old building, so poorly maintained that a tree has grown on the structure. He plans to eventually publish a book based on his oeuvre.
Sunilwas a student at Fine Arts College and won the Lalitakala Akademi Award in 1997. In 2016, he was awarded the Habitat Photosphere Award for a collection of photographs of ponds and water bodies found in and around Kodungaloor.