“Have you watched the Bollywood movie Fan ? Do you follow Game of Thrones ?” Sharad Haksar pops these questions at us and vanishes behind a stack of frames to get the ones that show the location where these were shot. The National Award-winning photographer points at an almost painting-like photo of a narrow street with light-brown buildings choking it from either side. The city of Dubrovnik, complete with walls and forts, is King’s Landing in Game of Thrones . Memories of the quaint place still afresh, Sharad talks about his 12-day trip to Italy and Croatia in September, with a sense of marvel. “We are still hungover,” says his wife Ratika Kaul Haksar, a fashion designer, even as she helps Sharad mount the photos at the Art Houz Gallery.
Sharad’s recent travel photographs captured the spring in Japan and winter in Iceland, before he headed to the crumbling old towns of Italy and the dazzling waterfalls of Croatia. “It was my first time to these places, and I was blown away by the old-world charm. It was like being transported to another world — out of the planet. For example, in Alberobello (a World Heritage site), located in the heel of Italy’s boot, wherever you turn, everything is conical — be it the greyish-white trulli (dry stone huts) or the dark green trees,” he says, reaching for a large frame of a charming café covered in a curtain of grapevine climbers on all sides. “Look at those symbols on the roof; most buildings have that… symbols to ward off evil; every town has a saint to protect it.”
Alberobello, a tiny 40-square-kilometre town, was the last leg of Sharad’s trip. From India, he flew to Rome, spent a day at the Vatican, drove to Ancona, and took a ferry from there to Croatia, and stayed in Split and Dubrovnik for a few days, before taking a ferry back to Italy. “All of this in 12 days, out of which two days we couldn’t go out since it was raining,” he says. But on days when the weather was clear, Sharad and Ratika would wake up at 4.30 a.m. and walk along the 16th Century fort that outlines the city (and extends for a total length of around 2 km). “It is one of the largest complete structures in Europe now. From the most elevated position, one can see the whole town; probably around 500 families live here. The rest of the buildings are shops and a school that face the Adriatic Sea,” he says, pointing at what looks like white matchboxes in the aerial shot.
Every evening, they would go around, marking a set of places in mind to shoot at the next morning, when the lighting was perfect. The exhibition features a mix of photos that were planned and unplanned. There is a photo of an entrance of a house that’s shot from the entrance of another, of streets shot from inside buildings, and of a dome with a small figurine of Jesus Christ, which was shot from the bottom of an open tower. “I try to capture the unconventional, the unexplored. But walking through the streets that are chock-a-block with houses and share walls with each other, it was easy to get lost,” he says. And, he probably did — in its beauty. Ratika recalls the time when Sharad walked till the very edge of the fort to capture a video of the ships entering and leaving the harbour in Croatia. “One more step, and he could have fallen. The tripod stand was teetering in the wind, and my heart was in my mouth,” she says.
Unperturbed, Sharad digs out the video on his phone and plays it with a childlike enthusiasm.
He is already planning his next trip to New Zealand in December, and to Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya next year. Though his work schedule might sound like long spells of holiday for people, he points out that each project entails a lot of work. One of the major differences is, he puts it simply, “When I am on a holiday, I do not touch my camera.”
The exhibition, titled Three, features photos of Croatia, Alberobello and a series of impressions using Holi powder, and is on till November 27 at Art Houz, Kasturi Rangan Road.
Behind the photos
Krka River,
Croatia
When we went to check out the famous lake in Split, we found that there was no water there. It’s full only during the winter when the ice melts. Someone suggested that we go to a place called Krka National Park. This was taken there. While the picture looks serene, the place was nothing like it. It was packed with tourists trying to get a good shot of the lake, almost like the kumbh mela here in India. Once I set up my tripod, the crowd closed in on where I was standing because they realised that I was a professional photographer, and would know the best location. I used a neutral density filter — a black filter that reduces light by 10 times, and subjected the image to long exposure for 30 seconds. That gave the softness to it.
The Vatican,
Rome
We were in Rome just for one day, and the Vatican was on our must-do list. It was teeming with tourists, with hardly any place to stand. So, I had just one shot at taking a nice picture, and this one captured it. I wanted to ensure that there are no people in the frame, there was just so much beauty in the structure that having people in the frame would just dilute it. The Vatican is one of the places where you can find the presence of god, simply because every nook and cranny of the building is art.
Aerial shot of Dubrovnik, Croatia
I wanted to take a bird’s eye view of the city. So, enthusiastically, on the first day, I walked to the entrance of the fort at 5.30 a.m. only to find that it opens at 8.30 a.m. I had to wait, and once I got to the highest point, I had to wait for a puff of cloud to pass through to get the perfect light. And, it did.
