Creatures small and wonderful

Arun V. C. captures the drama of the small world in his solo photography show

Macro photography, Arun V.C says, is a challenge he loves to take on

There is love, passion, war and sentiment. There is action, romance, feeling and thought. The universe of the little creatures is as real as ours. Photographer Arun V.C. trains his lens on it, documenting their lives with all its melodrama, in his solo photography show ‘Politics of the small’.

Macro photography, he says, is a challenge he loves to take on. “Small things have always fascinated me. We don’t realise what we are missing. Their worlds are so full of action, so full of beauty.” He captures a dragon fly’s diaphanous wings, the electric blue of a house fly’s eyes and the intricate detailing on a bug’s body. There are moths, butterflies, grasshoppers, ants, snails, spiders and their webs and several other microscopic insects, too. Some of the frames appear like scenes out of an abstract art film—two ants fighting over a cube of sugar, an ant carrying a feather to some secret destination, two flies engaged in a happy dance, a caterpillar contemplating on a leaf, a frog that has just spotted his prey.

Arun says he is interested in the politics of the small, the reason why he named the show thus. “These creatures are marginalised. Even when we talk of protecting the earthworm, we say that only because earthworms are essential to maintain an ecological balance. These small creatures are not appreciated for their beauty.”

Forty-nine of his photographs are on display at the Durbar Hall Art Gallery. Instead of using a macro lens, Arun has used extension tubes for the series. Though he has been taking photographs for the last 20 years, this is his first solo show.

Though he does not want to pin down his inspiration to a particular place, thing or event, his home-town Wayanad, he feels, should have contributed to his craft. “The landscape remains in your head and only when you leave it, does it come back in ways that you never thought it would,” he says.

Having started out as a graphic designer, Arun has dabbled in painting and illustration, too. With the arrival of digital photography, the doors of possibilities swung open. “The things one can experiment with digital photography are countless.”

The show is on till April 26.