The State Art Gallery at Madhapur is lined with a trail of immersive images celebrating female subjects around the country. Captured by 19 women photographers, their work is on display at the ongoing Indian Photography Festival (IPF)’s Women’s Photography Festival. CE speaks to three of these photographers, who are from Hyderabad, about their perspective, style and inspiration.
For Deepali Sharma Agarwal, photography is all about painting with light. “I was experimenting with a slow shutter (a photography technique). It makes the pictures interesting when there is movement. I sat on the road during last year’s Night Bazaar at Charminar and was trying to capture the monument, with life around it. The place was bustling with people, it was noisy and chaotic, yet, in some way, everyone knew what they were doing or what they wanted. A woman with her son was bargaining amid the hustle and bustle. That’s how I captured the essence of the place and life around it,” says Deepali, a city-based street photographer.
Photographs are timeless keepers of memories for Jovy Thomas. Photographs, she says, can break the laws of physics and make us travel back in time to relive the moment. “My daughter was born in London. She was there till she turned six months old. Since she has no memory of the place, she hopes to go to London and experience snowfall there,” she says.
This wish of hers is the inspiration behind the creation of the picture that speaks for itself. “I recently clicked some pictures of her, representing her time there. I presented one of those to her as a birthday gift this year. It’s now her favourite picture. The fact that I could bring happiness to a child through my work is something I am very grateful for,” she says.
The presence of a newborn lights up a room. “My zeal for capturing newborns never fades — not just from the thought that they will cherish their tiny selves when they grow up and look at these timeless images, but also from the memories that they leave behind, after each photoshoot. I prefer clicking newborns between five and 15 days after birth. During this phase, the babies are still in a crawled-up position — their hands and feet are held close like in a womb. It’s the best time to capture babies,” says Dr Soniya Bulandani, a newborn photographer.
Portrait photographer Radha Varanasi reads a person’s face as if it were a book, through her lens. “During shoots, I wait till I get the gist of the innate character of the person that I’m capturing,” says Radha. The photography festival is on till April 7.