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When imagination soars...

Nicholas Chorier displays his unique photographs at a show

EYE FOR DETAIL R. Udhaikumar at the gallery PHOTO: S.THANTHONI

The Taj Mahal looks different. With the pathway from the gate to the tomb being the centre of focus in an aerial shot, the splendorous white marvel is not as white in early morning light. The dome is not the tapering beauty but actually looks heavy and squatting on its body, and the minarets look short. The Taj is still beautiful of course, but looks strange from that angle. A kite after all has a unique perspective.

Nicholas Chorier has found a cost-effective and environment-friendly method of flying his camera high above his subjects. Tied to a kite, his aerial pictures require no pilot, no crazy manoeuvring and no paperwork. Guided by the wind, a mini video camera attached to the kite lets him adjust the frames.

The results are fresh. The city of Jodhpur, in the shadow of the Mehranghar Fort, is still as blue, but a closer view gives you more of the blue-rimmed white of the terraces than your usual saturated image of the city. In another picture `Rue des Etuves', of an old European city Montpellier, the photographer has captured two narrow streets. The dark plus sign of the crossroad creates deep, secret ridges in a surface of delicately tiled rooftops. The usual familiar street is a less welcome place in comparison to the sun baked happy roofs. Even the Kumbh mela is less crowded when seen from Chorier's kite.

His picture of grounded kite's being readied in Bali, as well as one in which more than a dozen other kites in all shapes and sizes, ranging from a bright yellow airplane to serpentslittered on a dull earth colour background, are a little surreal and almost humorous. So is the series that captures shadows. Humans are reduced to little blobs of colour while the shadows elongated on stretches of beach and over dessert dunes, come alive with all the drama and vigour of the form in action.

The pictures are not colour steeped and their sharpness a little affected by the atmosphere, but this only adds to the freshness of the images.

The exhibition is on till January 28, at the Alliance Francaise.

MEERA MOHANTY

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