The photograph of a dilapidated temple or any other ancient stone structure recaptures the presence of the people that once existed in a spatial existence jointly with the structure. The beauty of the photograph stems out of the effectiveness of capturing the "presence" associated with the structure.

A good photograph of a dilapidated structure of an ancient temple(now Godless ) recreates very evocatively the presence of the people who frequented the temple centuries ago .








The photographic poem

In the following poem I have tried to capture the "phantoms"exactly as a photographer does : fill as many visual details as possible . In doing so I have avoided , as far as possible, the use of imagery and back-and-forth movements in time so that the life of the ancients is recreated exactly like in a photograph :

Hampi

Rows of elegant stone arches
Stretching before Virupaksha temple
Housed multitudes of shops that sold
Exotic oriental merchandise
Incense sandalwood oil musk
And rarest of the Mysore silks
Ancient Vijaynagar hawkers
Sold diamonds and pearls in heaps
The lost civilisation of Hampi lies
Buried among these weathered rocks
Here every rock is a canvas of many hues
Every boulder is replete with legend.
The rapid Pampa meanders among
These cyclopean masses and here
She takes an abrupt northward course
This was the Kishkinda of Ramayana
Where our monkey-ancestors lived
Yonder lies the Matanga hill where
Sugriva took refuge from wrathful Vali.
Hampi took birth in this wild country
Strewn with boulders of strange shapes
Worn down by the vagaries of weathering.
Larger than life , famed emperor
Srikrishnadevaraya walked tall
Handsome and athletic conqueror
A poet-king with an exquisite sensibility
(Flanked by bejewelled queens
He stands immortalised in bronze
At the temple gates of Tirumala
The mighty emperor conquered
The distant Kalinga and its princess
Brought Srikrishna's idol to Hampi .
Under the haze of the searing sun
Ruined Hampi sweltered through
Five hundred years of history
The artistic plenitude of the sculptors
Defied the ruthless savagery of
The vandalising alien invaders
The stone thali of the temple spoke of
Giant men with gargantuan appetites
The harmonics of the musical pillars
Resonated through five centuries
A monolithic stone chariot stood
Motionless as though it were Time's
Relentless chariot that had come to a halt .


In short it is a plain narration just like what a historian does.

I have made a mental note to take a shot of this beautiful tree with fragrant flowers . This has stirred up my own memories of the trees in the temple compound with such beautiful flowers that I had invariably collected a few wilted flowers lying on the ground and carried them everywhere. We folded the petals and pierced each of the petals with the stem neatly to make a smaller flower .

My poem goes thus:

The firangipani flowers

The firangipani tree bloomed
In my village temple compound
And where it hurt it bled milk
Just like it had done in my childhood.
I smelt God through the peephole
Of a child’s memory enclosed
By the fragrance of the firangipani .






I have recently taken a picture of these beautiful flowers in Hyderabad

I have just come across a beautiful use of a symbol in nature to recreate a poignant story ,an intensely personal experience that can be comprehended by others only with the help of a narrative.The picture shows a series of blooming firangipani flowers outside a nursing home where the author's father is lying on the deathbed .The narrative is so beautiful that it deserves to be reproduced here :

"It looks charming, and it is. A simple wooden gate, painted white, the typical "picket fence" attracts the eye, but looking around, the scent of the frangipanni flowers also attracts the senses.

This is the gate that leads to my father’s room... beyond this gate, my father lies dying.

It's part of a beautiful Nursing Home in Rockhampton, and I grow to both love, and eventually dread, this gate.

The frangipanni tree offers me large clumps of flowers - their heads bowed in respect. The path is swept on a daily basis, so that any flowers that may fall are fresh and clean, unbruised, unlike my heavy heart.

Will he remember me today? Will he still be there, in his mind, in his body?

I pick a frangipanni and place it behind my right ear, so it shines out happily when he sees me.

They have always been my favourite flower, in their pureness and simplicity, the heady, giddy perfume enclosing me within a safe world of childhood memories, of hanging upside down in a huge old tree, marvelling at the hugeness of the world in my front garden.

Wonderful memories of reading books and eating apples, running around the frangipanni tree kicking up the leaves in autumn...waiting patiently for the first sings of new growth, the dark green tips sprouting from each barren stem, holding the promise of another summer, more glorious flowers, more hanging upside down to compare if my world had expanded during the winter.

This gate, this white, simple gate leads to where my father lies dying.

I took this photo as a precaution to a hazy memory, I wanted to savour every detail about my dad before stress and loss dimmed my memory.

Now I look at it, and although I am smiling with my love of the tree with its daily offerings of fresh perfumed flowers for me to enjoy, I am reminded of a softer, sadder time, where breathing becomes a chore, where time not only stands still, but runs backwards, as we the children become the adults and vise versa.

I push the gate open, and stoop to collect my flower... "

The shadows have always fascinated us all through our lives although they have no substance and have no independent existence . Usually the shadows are static. Even more fascinating are the moving shadows , gently gyrating in soft moonlight .


In a photograph of a tiled house I have taken recently , the shadows have beautifully merged into the house to give it a fascinating depth, at once mystical and visually appealing.

The intersection of two or three surfaces or planes is interesting material for photography because of its intrinsic light. The light here is gentle and subdued and is a comforting blend of light reflected from two or three surfaces. As children playing hide and seek we all sought corners as though they were refuges from the harsh light of the world. Of course the most amazing corner that makes the best photographic representation is the horizon, the line of intersection between the earth and the sky or the sea and the sky.


Some of my favourite corners are:

An abandoned well with overgrown vegetation and stagnant water
At the back of the house where the house springs from the earth
Where the compound wall rises from the earth
Corners enclosed by a cave
Corners hiding behind a door(a child’s favourite hiding place )
Corners created by an awning
Corners created by the parapet wall on a balcony


My poem goes thus :


Corners



Those days we felt every corner
Light poured through them
A gentle breeze blew over them
The corners had their own soul
They were lying in a pool of light
Creating their own silhouettes
The jasmines whispered in the corners
Through soft jellied moonlight
Their fragrance held us in thrall.
Our old tiled house had its corners
Soft and purring like our family kitten
They cast such fine shadows
Dusky, deep and mysterious
We looked into our abandoned well
To fathom the depth of its corners
The water there was a mere shadow
The shadow of a reality that once was.

Look at the following situation rich with poetic possibilities as well as ideal material for a good photograph :


The bench in the park
--------------------------------


Sunlight sieved by the pipal tree
Played on the spread-out newspaper
And the trouser legs.


Here it is merely a static representation of a spatial situation without the story elements.

As a poetic image it is a marvellous situation which has brilliant visual elements :sunlight , sieved by the pipal foliage, playing ,trouser legs , spread-out newspaper . A photograph reproduces all the visual elements except "playing", a dynamic-visual element owing its source to the wind in the tree . Although there is no story element which makes the situation interesting the photograph is still , at one level, evocative because of the way it captures all the elements into a unique spatial existence carved in a narrow strip of time.

The empty park bench


He is not seen on the bench these days
A cigarette stub
Continues to announce him.

The photographer should , in this case, necessarily have a 'story' or any number of elements of the story which would make the photograph interesting. In other words what is needed is a premeditated plotline or a script .In this case the elements of the story are:

A man usually sits on the park bench
He is not seen these days ;either he has moved out of town or is dead.
He was smoking a cigarette some days ago while sitting on the bench

The park bench (without the man ), the man and the cigarette formed the spatial existence . The man is not there now but the bench and the cigarette -stub continue to act as though he is there .A photograph of the empty bench and the cigarette-stub nearly accomplish a recall of the earlier spatial existence

In the above photograph a 5-year old unnamed girl stares through another time , another space . The viewer's own recall of an early 1940's life will be an aid towards penetrating the different level of consciousness that one would perceive in the picture.

A comparatively easier understanding is through a piece of poetry. Here is a poem written by me about my dead father whom I have never seen while alive and have always dreamed about in all my life:

Reverse View

Up there a pair of keen eyes
An involuntary twitch of beauty
A taut screwing of eyeballs
Consciousness flowed this way
A white kurta, a speck of black hair
From behind the parapet wall
He sees me whole,flooding my being
My diagonal view is a rebounce
Consciousness reverse-flows
Reinforced by the fluid present
In horizontal ether-filled space
He happened half a century ago
While I exist ,here, in finite space.


Here I have looked at a different level of consciousness in time as a balcony where my father stood sending down some sort of waves to me who is standing in a different plane in time.

A group of things or beings together form a spatial existence , which is unique and does not bear repetition because it has existed in a narrow strip of time and owes its existence to the viewer's consciousness. Such an existence passes quickly and cannot be resurrected in space.The only thing that can be done is to recall it in the present consciousness.While recalling there is an overlap of the current mental state of the viewer over the recalled consciousness.


A photograph capturing such an existence will be like reproduction of a slice of human conciousness . The existence does not , however, independently stay outside of the viewer's consciousness .


Take a look at the following situation , as seen in poetry :




The empty park bench

He is not seen on the bench these days
A cigarette stub
Continues to announce him.



The recall is achieved through highlighting the continued existence of a participant in the spatial existence i.e. the cigarette stub .