BENGALURU: Photographer Krishanu Chatterjee brings together two different eras of photography, while keeping the subject constant, at his solo show ‘Silence’. The subject is ‘Hands’. He uses collodion positive from 1850s and the present-day digital photography techniques to tell stories behind the hands of the people. He says as the show is part of World Photography Day celebrations, he wants to pay tribute to photographers and scientists for the advent of the medium.
He researched about the collodian positive technique online and through manuals. “A few national and international artists also helped me to make my work better. Professor Arpan Mukhopadhyay from Shantiniketan, West Bengal and a few other photographers helped me.” The collodian positive is an elaborate process. The 36-year-old explains, “Collodian, ether and other chemicals are mixed. A coat of it is applied on a glass plate in the camera while still wet.” The plate is then developed to a negative, which is bleached with salt solution and placed on a 4x5 or 8x12 inch water colour paper and kept in sunlight. “On a gloomy day, you have to keep the picture in sunlight for about four hours. It is then varnished with chemical gold chloride and covered with glass,” he adds. Krishanu is exhibiting six images produced by this technique at the show. He says, “It took me four days to finish the six prints. None of the prints would be similar, as they are all handmade. It’s like making a painting.”
He believes faces can lie, but hands never do. “It can tell you the real story of the person if you observe properly. Whether he is rich or poor, lazy or hardworking, conscious of his looks or not and it also tells you about their social background,” he says. He is fascinated with hands. “There’s lot of geometry if you see... the veins and fingers... they attract me.” Clicking these pictures wasn’t an easy task. He says, “People would ask why am I clicking their hands. But, over a period of time, I developed skills to capture a moment and vanish suddenly, while doing street photography. These pictures are all candid.” He has been working on this series since 2007. Krishanu says, “With time, my thought process is evolving. The way I look at the same hand changes. Also, different people will have varying perspective about the same hand.”
He says he would continue with the series until he reaches a threshold where he feels there’s nothing more to explore in it. “You can’t ask an artist when he will stop painting. Likewise, until I feel I am done with this series, I will continue working on it.” Krishanu says he has not undergone any formal training in photography. He graduated in microbiology but was always fascinated by photography since his childhood. “I would see images in different books and wished I had clicked them,” he recalls. He took up photography full-time eight years ago. Take a sneak peek into the lives of Krishanu’s subjects through their hands captured in a frame at Art Houz, Vasanth Nagar. The show is on till August 31.