Just look. Look in a way that you’ve never looked before. Embrace things in a way that makes them even more ebullient. Experience each little change in a way that it becomes even more exuberant. British photographer Tony Clancy, who is in the city to undertake a photography workshop at India Habitat Centre, feels photography is nothing more than a simple act of looking and observing. Sharing his thoughts on the subject, Clancy, under the patronage of Habitat Photosphere—a year-long photography festival at the centre—brings you the exhibition, workshop and talk, which emphasises on the fine art of discerning things with an enviable focus. Along with that, the photographer talks about gardens, which is also his current topic of research. In this undertaking, he will be accompanied an independent environmental photographer, Arati Kumar-Rao.
Believing that gardens transform environment for better and for worse, his new works present a fresh perspective on gardens. “Photographed in both India and the UK, the pictures open up a dialogue between East and West, tropical and temperate, between those who create and tend for gardens and those who come to enjoy them,” says Clancy, adding, “All this can only be understood when we train ourselves to look carefully, as for both, the photographer and the viewer, the world is experienced visually.” This glimpse of reality transmitted through the sense of sight, apprehends vast amounts of information in fractions of a second, that are grabbed by the camera for the eye to consume, he shares. “Of course, nothing is ever so simple. Images are only a starting point for an infinite number of conversations–with oneself, with others– where meanings and aesthetics are shared, agreed, debated, refuted,” he says.
The strange, highly complex illusions that live within the frame of the photograph, Clancy tells us, in the end need language to begin to unravel them, and through his latest talk, he teaches everybody how to do that.
Exhibition titled The Garden Underground, will take place at Jor Bagh metro station from March 21 till June 21.
For details, log on to Facebook page of Habitat Photosphere.