Mind the Frame: How I lost it and found a lot more..
By Ankur Animesh Surin
By Ankur Animesh Surin
The guards’ repeated attempts at driving the I-give-a-damn-about-rules tourists out of the nooks and crannies of Purana Quila and the light of the fading sun filled me up with a doubt: whether this trip was worth at all. I gave a tug at my camera and hauled it up to meet my eye; a few random shots and I made a last ditch effort at getting some good pictures. Although, all I could get was my friend sitting tired and dull (and much to my irritation, unwilling to even pretend to strike a pose – a saving grace for my botched up frame) from the seemingly day-long photo shoot. I could tell how he was feeling.
What am I doing? I am not going to click portraits here all day! I thought, only half an hour into the planned photos-for-facebook-shoot.
I grew impatient with every snap of the shutter – it reached my ear bearing a distinct violence of the thunk of a butcher’s cleaver meeting the chopping block, after having said a raspy goodbye to the meat. It was clearly my mind playing tricks, for I’d never have used such an analogy. Photography is – I wouldn’t say, like breathing, lest I should be running the risk of lending a ladder to the reader’s expectations of seeing some breathtaking photos (something I am still not capable of achieving) – something that I like very much.
Yet I felt like shedding the skin of the photographer and take shelter in one of the abandoned corners of the vast quila, admiring the beauty of the architecture (something that I intend to do the next time I visit the Purana Quila, or other sites harbouring the wealth of Indo-Islamic architecture).
Now when I think of it, I feel certain that it was the heat and the sweat (at least it saves me the embarrassment to admit that my flippant mood was to be blamed) that made me abhor what I loved, and curse (under my breath, of course) those I loved; it is funny what a single day of summer in Delhi can do to you!
My deliverance, however, came at the long-cold hands of the various Emperors, craftsmen and architects who gave shape to the Mughal architecture as it stands today.
I still remember my first trip to Agra where I had fallen head over heels for the beauty of the architecture of Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and Itimad-ud-Daula.
I had been so taken with the designs and patterns of the monuments that I spent the entire trip launching relentless onslaughts on the shutter-release button and every single part of the camera involved in the process of image creation; vexing my parents and sister, the tour guide (for not even an Emperor’s Royal elephant could have forced me to move from one place to another without me taking twenty or so photos at every stop, let alone the pleas of the poor fellow) and other tourists; and then going into the overkill mode by editing and reediting the photos until I managed to ruin most of them (the following are few of the survivors)!
What had struck me most about the architecture, were the magnificently crafted arches, for being a photographer (self-proclaimed) I couldn’t resist the temptation of capturing those potential frames.
Giving a grateful nod to my rescuers (and tracing my steps back from the digression), I decided to incorporate these architectural wonders in (and as) my frames. My friends (Vikas, Satyarthi and Amit) willingly agreed to change the location (perhaps encouraged by my slightly cheerful mood) and posed to their heart’s content. To my surprise, even I began to enjoy the new development and snapped quite a few shots happily.
Arches along with domes and minarets forms a very important part of Indo-Islamic architecture.
Yeah, I know another digression, but be patient friends, a little information has never harmed anyone.
With the main darwaaza (entrance) of apparently every Indo-Islamic monument shaped in the form of pointed arches, it is a feature hard to miss. However, the arch is purely Islamic in origin; it was fused, along with other Islamic architectural elements, with the Indian style of architecture (kiosk, minar) to give the buildings a visual splendour, unmatched in brilliance even today.
As we relocated ourselves a little closer to the massive red sandstone structures, I couldn’t help admiring the amalgamation of beauty and sensibility that characterised these arches. The geometry of the arches is not just pleasing to the beholder’s eyes, but it also serves a more functional role. The arches (especially pointed arches) cover long spaces between beams and are capable of holding the immense weight of huge domes without the help of columns in between. This granted people greater space for religious and other congregations.
They also worked as gigantic frames for smaller objects (doors and windows, for example), thus giving depth to their forms and adding further grandeur to the buildings.
The very idea motivated me to use these arches as frames and add some depth to the otherwise flat photographs I had taken earlier in the day.
And besides, the frames wouldn’t just lend depth to the frames, but give a distinct character to the photo and thereby, extend it to the people in the photo as well.
Whenever I think of frames, I generally associate sharp-edged geometrical frames with the qualities of seriousness, discipline, strength, asceticism and so on. On the other hand, the notion of sensuality, fun, beauty, love come to my mind when round-edged frames are concerned (perhaps this is because of a certain film I watched (Somers Town) which used architecture to a similar effect); however, due to reasons best known to the unyielding part of my brain, I do not extend this view on photos and photo frames
I continued clicking photos and my friends kept posing until all of us got tired of it. And then there was the whistle of the guards, the dying sun and the doubt rising like a huge beast from the depths of my subconscious.
Was this trip worth at all?
I was sitting, sorting out photos I had clicked in Delhi that were good enough to accompany a write up on my trip to the historical sites in the city when I came across the photos from the ‘botched up’ photo shoot. I scrambled through them at first, then observed it at a more leisurely pace and at last with a dogged interest employed by someone who is hell-bent on discovering something important – the answer to my question.
That was when I came across this:
An otherwise neglected photo (in the midst of the grand frames who would have given it more than a glance), it slowly crept up from the shadows to take hold of me.
There isn’t anything great about it.
Yeah.
And perhaps this lack of greatness or grandeur makes me root for it. The composition is flawed (not that my other frames are flawless), but it is not dull. The photo would have been shallow, even with the depth the arch provided, without the presence of human elements in the frame.
There is no denying that the arches and the Indo-Islamic architecture on the whole are magnificent, they do not require anything else to complement them. But my photos, being once removed, twice, if Plato is to be taken seriously, need other elements to complement them.
It’s funny it took me two months, a different city and three back-to-back viewings of my photos to brush away my doubt; it’s funny I couldn’t look beyond the frames when I knew what frames did – they accentuate the subject.
So, was the trip worth at all?
Yes, it was. But the memories and the stories that each passing minute would weave around the events of that day, are worth more than anything else.
About the author Ankur Animesh Surin:
A rolling stone (with jagged edges), stumbling across domains as (essentially similar yet) varied as poetry, prose and photography, out to tell stories in whichever way possible.
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