The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : The right brew of sensibilities

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 27, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

The right brew of sensibilities

Ayesha Matthan

Nikhil Velpanur believes photography is not about how good the photo looks

Unique perspective: Photographer Nikhil Velpanur (left) and one of his photographs.

BANGALORE: Photographer Nikhil Velpanur starts clicking away on his camera only after his subjects stop posing and saying cheese. Says the 24-year-old engineering student, who is exhibiting his images for the first time, “I wait for the person I am photographing to finish smiling and get back to frowning!” Nikhil’s exhibition, titled The Others, will be a display of seven photos of people that “India has forgotten about”.

He abhors fashion photography. “I am not interested in capturing what people look like when they put on makeup… I want to capture their inner beauty — the person behind the body.”

Nikhil has just returned from a two-week-long trip to Arunachal Pradesh.

“It felt like China with the bamboo and its people. Then I realised that there are just two things that hold India together: Bollywood and cricket.” His first real experiment with his camera happened almost a year ago in Poonjeri village near Mahabalipuram where he shot pictures of the Nari Kurava tribals. Nikhil is also the senior executive of a magazine for the youth, called Strange Brew, which he started in July 2005, along with friends.

“I found that the media didn’t focus on issues of youth, which empowers them, but just controlled people’s opinions.”

He asks: “Do we need gossip?” Some of the co-founders of his magazine are college dropouts. “You don’t need to be from IIT or IIM to have convictions about life and goals.” It was here that he picked up the tricks of the trade.

“We could not afford a photographer for the magazine so I had no option but to learn the art myself.”

He is currently in the process of getting Strange Brew launched online with tie-ups with venture capitalists. He is also keen on establishing a trust that can bring the youth to work closely with the poor. “In a pilot project, we hired buses for primary government school children to visit R.N.S. Institute of Technology and work in their labs with engineering students, who would help them with computers.”

He feels that photography is not about how good the photo looks but what story it portrays. He hopes to sell his images to keep the organisation and its work going.

The Others, which is a collection of photos of the people of Arunachal Pradesh and Poonjeri, will be on display on Thursday at Fuga at No. 1, Nagarjuna Building, Wood Street, Ashoknagar, from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. The photos can also be viewed on www.nikhilvelpanur.com. For details, call 9886059148.

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