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Kolkata|
He had travelled 440 days covering 95,000 km journey over 22 countries to seek audience from those that cannot speak. And therein lies his acute sense of hearing all splayed out in 60 odd frames at The Harrington Street Arts Centre as an exhibition titled, STONE – BEING AND BECOMING on till July 6.
Kounteya Sinha supplies the confirmation, “I always hear a picture before I can see. I don’t care of shutter stops or aperture. I just want to tell a story that is trying so hard to hide”.
The exhibition that was inaugurated by Dr Rupali Basu, President and CEO, Apollo Hospitals, US Consul General Craig L. Hall and actor Mumtaz Sorcar, explores and captures the romance of being static — the story of a rock becoming an astounding architectural wonder to the metamorphosis of us humans turning to stone – the phenomenon of unfeeling. From the cobbled streets of Prague with its desolate beauty that showed to the photographer a parallel to human life to the “twin heart”, something that photographer unveiled in this show – the only two places in the world where nature has created a perfect heart, Kounteya Sinha’s photographs are harsh yet lyrical.
Kounteya has spent half his life looking at the world as a journalist. His photographs are an extension of that trait. He finds a story in the most unlikely of places, is able to peel off layer by layer to expose the real from the got up. Stone also unveiled to the world a stunning portfolio in black and white, speaking about which he said, “Photography is very similar to a human mind. It oscillates between dark and light. Sometimes therefore you see an image which is as bright as a rainbow smudged. Other times, the only colour you see is more black and less white.” He further added, “If you ever give someone a camera, you will often see how they want to take a picture from an angle that is tough. The picture might be right in front of him but what is in front is always what is simple. Simple never attracted anyone. But my art is simple. Just like life should be. It pays homage to a story.”
Explaining the photographs he added, “So many of us are portraying ourselves to be alive. But in reality, we are more dead than these walls that never talk. People, many of them, wake up every day as if they just stepped out of their coffins, played their part expected of them by society and walks back smiling and ecstatic, only to shut the door of their rooms behind them, take their masks off and step back into their coffins.”
