8/13/2019 Better Photography Visual Musings Jan'14

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Discovering Panoramas: Why WePhotograph the Way We Do

Amit Pasricha was born in a family of photographers. After imbibing qualities from his grandfather and father, he carved his own path, in terms of how heviewer experience the nal image. This panoramists books are grand and ambitious, and his photographs are characterised by the use of storytelling motif

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Though the word panorama literally means an unbroken view of the whole region surrounding an observer,unfortunately the word itself is tainted. This is proved byseveral practitioners all across the world, and particularly in thewest, and a host of mediocre touristy imagery, with no start point andno end point. In other words, what you could classify as pointlesspictures. On top of that, the panoramic scene has always beensynonymous with clichs. That word that makes a contemporaryphotographers skin crawl. Beautiful sugary landscapes, to a pointwhere you would be almost excused as serious photographers if youwere to think, now why on earth should I use a format that is notonly so negatively viewed, but also takes us right back to that veryBritish pictorialism that is so out of fashion today. What I would liketo say to you is, perhaps that thought needs a rethink.

I once came upon an analogy on a life of an artist with abus terminus. Lets appropriate the analogy for us panoramicphotographers and lets make the bus terminus Delhis ISBT.Some of you might, at this point, be thinking that this cant be a verynice analogy, considering it has something to do with the disgustingISBT of terrible experiences. I urge you to read nonetheless.This analogy mimics the lives of all creative people, who are either atthe start of their careers like some of you, or bang in the middle of it,like me (I am nowhere near nished yet!)

Metaphorically speaking, each bus stop represents one year of ourphotographic, or more specically, panoramic life. Then three stops,of course, means, three years of that work. Lets say that for the rstthree years you set yourself the goal of photographing the urbanlandscape with a Fujica 617 or a Noblex camera. You shoot them,all Ansel Adam zone systemed and tight, and your trademark styleis an all-centred approach. It is your signature, your watermark, astatement of who you are.

At the end of three years, if you showed these photographs as abody of work to someone knowledgeable and he or she said, are youfamiliar with the work of photographer Christopher Faust, youdbe shocked! And you would realise that what you have been doingfor the last three years has already been done, and by someone withfar greater fame than you have attained, thus far. So what do you

do? Really, what do you do? You get off the bus, grab a cab (becauselife is short), and head straight back to the bus station looking for adifferent platform and a bus in a different direction.

This time, you decide you are going to piece together overlappingimages to construct a panorama. Technically, these are called joinersand you are a panographer but you dont know that. You spend three years and produce a series of works that elicit the same comment:Have you not seen the work of famous photographer DavidHockney? Your work so resembles his, he is your inspiration, isnthe? youre asked. Huh!

Boy that is tough, isnt it? What do you do? You are denitely in thedoghouse now! Do you return back and look for another platform?

Amit Pasricha

After all, there is no point in doing something that has been donebefore, and that person has already hogged all the credit for thatkind of work. At best, you will become his shadow! You dont wantto be known as a clone! You really want to go back and nd that busthat you can claim to be your own, of course panoramically andphotographically speaking.

It is quite justiable for you to think that there must be acertain way of seeing which is just you and nobody else in theentire photographic world sees quite that way. Do you then goand look for that special bus which is meant for you? Are youlikely to nd such a bus?

Well, the answer is really simple. Dont run back to the bus station.Stay on the bus. For a while, it may seem that the route taken by your bus is the same as that of the other, the bus of the more famousperson. But sooner or later, you will see that you are pretty much on your own! Your bus is now charting its own course, and where ChrisFaust & Hockney are headed is somewhere else entirely!

The panoramic world embraces this philosophy, for the world youstep into with panoramas embraces that larger vision. In a sense, yousort of develop this wonderful feeling of being omnipresent.

This happened to me as well. With no formal training inphotography, as is true for most photographers of my time, my ideasand my vision were clearly my own. Add to that the advantage ofhaving no internet, none whatsoever. Complete bliss! The virtuesof being in a bubble. You might think that without the sharingand critique, where could I go? What would be my guiding light? When you embrace this larger vision of your world, that visionembraces you as well. As you look outside and gather the world into your mind, your relationship with it comes into sharp focus. You arethen your best friend and your internal critique is that voice that willlight your way forward.

Lately I have even begun to think that exposure to this visualbombardment, of which we have plenty of these days, comingfrom where I am now, is perhaps detrimental to my inner imagebuilding process. It is that world that is not only fragile but soeasily inuenced by this very trending. Luckily, since I had noprofessors vision to borrow, I had to build my own way of seeing,

and my portfolio was based on what appealed to me, and of coursecoupled with the hard facts of life, which was that a lot of what I wasphotographing was the commercial work I would get. I was rebornthen. I called myself the panoramist. I had been warned by an inner voice earlier that being a panoramist would be an addiction, a deadlyone perhaps, and I thought to myself, Oh well, let me do a bit ofthis, and I would probably tire of it eventuallyand get back intophotographing rectangles, or squares. Each subject decides its ownformat, I argued.

I was mistaken. I was adopting, not a technique, but an entirephilosophy; a dramatic shift in my viewpoint which took me sometime to understand that you are the way you photograph.