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Book Review
When seeing becomes meditation
SHALINI UMACHANDRAN
ZEN OF SEEING: Rajshree Sarabhai; Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 31, Somnath Road, Usmanpura, Ahmedabad-380014. Rs. 975.
In the age of click-and-delete digital photography when we seem to consume photographs every day, it’s hard to make an image have meaning and value. Photography is essentially about recording the ordinary — but looking hard enough at the ordinary to find something that will make an arresting image. No painting or drawing, however realistic it is, can be considered to belong to its subject the way a photograph does.
With digital photography and mobile cameras, we record moments to be discarded with such enthusiasm that it is hard to find images that contain the value of looking and observing. Rajshree Sarabhai’s Zen of Seeing makes an effort to bring value back into the act of seeing and observing.
Inspired by nature
Her book comprises a collection of photographs, close-ups and tight compositions that capture the colour, texture and serenity of nature. Sarabhai has an eye for detail and colour; this is obviously someone who loves nature and has spent devoted hours observing and capturing everyday flowers and ferns in extraordinary, almost surreal, ways. Some of her compositions make flowers such as the common Blue Dawn Glory almost ethereal in its beauty. Occasionally profound but often banal quotations accompany some of the photographs — words of wisdom from self-help books and new-age gurus to soothe the anxious and the stressed. The photographs themselves, with or without the carefully chosen scraps of philosophy, are beautiful and calming, though sometimes oddly soft-focussed.
The wealth of fine detail that Sarabhai has captured — veins on leaves, subtle variations in colour, intriguing leaf formations — seems to point out how we fail to pay attention to the little things in life, which could be a source of happiness and inner peace.
Observation
Observation is important, she seems to say, not only to make you more aware of and interested in the world around you but also to be able to appreciate anything completely. Some of the messages are not so subtle, as colours clash gloriously and flowers bloom joyfully red and orange to proclaim what the Dalai Lama describes in his preface to the book as “the glory of nature, the source of sustenance of all living beings.”
An index with basic information on the plants featured would have added another dimension to this rather unusual book. Though the concept of this book is a trifle weak, it still works on many levels — as just a collection of interestingly composed pictures, detailed studies of leaves and flowers, photographs that simply calm you, or as semi-philosophical statements on living.
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