From true places not on a map

‘Get pack go,’ a maiden exhibition of photographs by Akhil Komachi, is a visual travelogue of India in every sense.

This 21-year-old Computer Science student of Farook College here has sure kept up with the legacy of his father Ajeeb Komachi, known for his photographs that are often visual poetry.

Akhil took to the camera at a very young age, and he has put it to good use over his travels across the country and Nepal.

Beauty and pain

In ‘Get pack go,’ we come across around 50 photographs from the remotest villages and mountains of the country. His lens has captured the beauty of nature at its best as well as the pain in the eyes of the deprived sections of society. He has brought to attention certain matters that we tend to overlook or that which do not grab people’s attention easily.

Akhil’s travels are self-funded thanks to the earnings from his smaller outings as a photographer for some magazines. Equally interesting as the photographs are the captions beneath each of them, offering a different perspective to what is obvious.

There are quite a few references to the joys of travelling and the benefits of it, something that the photographer had a first-hand experience in.

‘A journey is best measured in friends than in miles,’ says the caption beneath the photograph of a man with his monkeys in Kolkata. ‘It is not down in any map, true places never are,’ says the caption for a view of the Himalayas from a river valley. ‘Age is simply the number of years the world has been enjoying you,’ says the caption beneath the picture of two elderly men enjoying Holi. ‘A ship in a port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for’ is the description for a camel safari.

The exhibition that began on Sunday was inaugurated by writer K.P. Ramanunni. It concludes on March 5.