“It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” — Paul Caponigro
Photography opened my eyes to the beauty and fragility of the people around me. Since childhood, my dream was to become a painter but I ended up becoming a Software Engineer. The painter inside me never die so I found another medium for satisficing my passion putting my thought and feeling on canvas, I start doing photography, I couldn’t paint with brushes and colours so I start painting with light and my lens using my camera.
The most common question asked to every photographer is “What kind of pictures do you take?” My answer for this is very simple and straight “Portrait”. Yes, I shoot people.
I am always struck by the feeling a portrait can produce. A portrait for me is a pure opportunity to engage your audience to see what they never experienced with their naked eyes. I have done my associateship in portraiture from the British Institute of Professional Photography U.K.
Most of my portraits are sensual and erotic; with the subject presented on a black background taking on the look of a sketch or painting. I continue to develop my own artistic approach with subjects selected based on what speaks to me emotionally.
My work is not very warmly acceptable for some of the audience as they feel some nudity in it. Some people feel that the nude form is something that should be hidden away both in art and the artist’s classroom. I believe that one source of this sort of reaction arises from a lack of understanding between nudity and vulgarity. As said by Michelangelo “What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is nobler than the shoe, and skin more beautiful that the garment with which it is clothed?”
My mission is to capture and present a unique perspective of human portraits that engages the viewer and symbolizes a concept or tells a story. To create this unique perspective, I use a full range of techniques and experiment with lighting, props, backgrounds, locations, and most importantly my emotions. Sometimes I use to sit in my studio keep staring at the empty stage and visualizing what I believe should be a portrait.
I am interested in the true, non-guarded portraits getting to the more real part of oneself. in the search of capturing the true side has brought me to turn the camera on me and I called it “Self Portraits”.
I as a photographer feel that there are so many ideas and themes I could work upon, but I feel incarcerated due to the society and narrow minds of people around me. I don’t want to leave my land just to calm down the artist inside me by going to a place where I am free to express my feeling in form of portraits. Because this land has given me an individuality, a name by which not many but some know me and enjoy my work. I am proud of being a part of this land from where so many world-renowned artists have been born.
