Playing with light and shades is what Harsh Kamat enjoys the most as a photographer. He chose to be in the company of camera at 17 and later decided to remain faithful to this mode of expression that allowed him to capture the wild and the world to tell stories in pictures. TGLife takes a curious look at his pictorial journey
He is a people’s person. They fascinate him. Keeping people as the theme he weaves his work around their stories. “I love to work with people, their emotions, their happiness, their sorrows and their stories. This fascinates me. Always on the hunt to look out for stories, I love to make conversations with people, especially when I travel,” admits Harsh Kamat for whom photography is much more than just technical tool. He likes to be called a storyteller. “What a beautiful feeling it is to write with light the stories!” he quips.
Admitting that both are forms of art - photography and painting, he deliberates on what makes a photo different than a painting. “Both a forms of art and both complement each other. The concept remains the same - light, shade, texture, forms and concepts. I believe every photographer is a painter as well and every painter is a photographer. Photographer portrays it through an image, and an artist through the painting. Everyone sees. But what makes it special is replicating it through a painting, or capturing it through a photograph,” he feels.
The camera plays the role in photography whereas in painting, a brush stroke and colours rule the game. Camera is a technical tool. It only captures a part of the bigger picture - what’s already there in the universe, created by the creator, the nature. While painting, the artist has to imitate, duplicate what’s already painted on the canvas of the cosmos. Differentiating between the two forms of art Harsh maintains, “There is much more that goes behind making a picture. As Ansel Adams rightly said, - You don’t take a photograph, you make one.”
A lot of things have made lasting impression on this young, sensitive photographer’s mind. “I somehow capture images in my mind that I do not capture on my camera purposely. These images turn into memories. Sometimes, over a cup of coffee or while sitting alone in the lap of nature, I have a flashback which makes me smile or shed a tear of joy,” shares Harsh who initially would not capture a lot of landscapes. But over a period pf time when he began travelling, landscapes made him realise how tiny we, humans are and how vast the cosmos is.
Real art of the photographer lies in being able to capture the right moment at the right time. There are two things Harsh believe a photographer must possess, which are more important than technical knowledge or good equipment. “Passion and observation - passion has the power to make every dream come true and observation is the key - it’s my strength,” he stresses.
Photographs well titled or captioned can do wonders, feels Harsh. “It is very important to title or caption your photograph. It is that conversation that you are starting with the viewer. The viewer then starts thinking. For that fraction of a second or a minute, you are making the view think, you’re playing with the emotions of the viewer. And this is a huge responsibility, the way I see it. Texts play a very vital role in photography. At the same time, sometimes it is better to leave the pictures untitled than to spoil it with an irrelevant or distracting title.”
(Curated by Sandeep Murgaonkar ‘Story of a Pause’ is an exclusive collection of 50 pauses, each handpicked to tell its story at Harsh Kamat’s debut solo exhibition beginning on October 12 at 5.30 pm at Art Gallery, Kala Academy, Panaji and to be continued till Oct 16)
