Digital Moon and Analogue Nights

Pathumayude Aadu by Abul Kalam Azad

PhotoMail — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 05:18:57 +0000

In Pathumayude Aadu, the author delves into the avant-garde investigative journalism pioneered in Kerala, particularly highlighting the innovative portrayal of Basheer's beloved characters, which set a new standard for how literature could be explored and documented within the realm of journalism.

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The Meeting of Two Legends – MGR and Mammootty

PhotoMail — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:36:13 +0000

From the erstwhile Madras, on the inauguration day, MGR arrived at the Cochin old airport, and I was there to shoot him. As a big fan of MGR, obviously one among the millions of MGR lovers, I cherished my fascination to meet and shoot him. A master performer who excelled in playing fashionable, romantic, globetrotting and adorable heroes, MGR was unique by all standards. As most of the journalists and photographers took images of his arrival and left, I decided to stick around.

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Crows: Photographing the Familiar | Abul Kalam Azad

PhotoMail — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 13:12:56 +0000

Photographs can make familiar objects, places, and people more familiar. Everyday mundane encounters and banal objects, when photographed, instill an interest in its viewer to observe the ignored. For, when we look at familiar objects, again and again, it reveals something or the other that was not seen during the first instance.

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Huge and Historic: On the First Cochin Carnival

PhotoMail — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 05:17:16 +0000

After my father’s demise, I stumbled upon a few negatives he had preserved along with some valuable documents. It was amidst this, I found a few strips of the negatives of the Carnival Parade 1985 (The First Cochin Carnival), the culminating event of the year-long Beach Festival (1984-85). The origin of the Cochin Carnival is a lot more straightforward than what is being popularly narrated today. It began as a celebration of the UN Declaration of 1985 as the International Youth Year. Such a remarkable cultural event was made possible in Kochi thanks to its rich cosmopolitan history.

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Microhistories of Unsung Heroes

PhotoMail — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 08:28:10 +0000

Of all the artists I met at Kalapeedam, Chicku was closest to me, as there were many things common between us. Chicku was also a drop-out, self-taught, and nomadic. By nature, he was timid and tranquil. Most of his works were surrealistic animal and plant forms. For his study, we spent several days trekking and exploring the forests and mountainous regions of South India. A wonderful painter with unmatchable skill and capability, Chicku brought out his artistic expression with a lot of rebellion and originality.

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Hitchhiking Days

PhotoMail — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 08:44:44 +0000

Most of the Indian photographers learned from their foreign masters and hence, their styles continued to dominate Indian photography. They were either voyeuristic visual trophies that professed, “I had been there, seen that, met him”, or a tool that propagated “top-down let’s-look-at-the-suffering” sort of charity or propaganda of the photographer/client.

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Mattancherry: My Cosmopolitan Hometown

PhotoMail — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 05:46:17 +0000

Mattancherry has been a microcosm of authentic cosmopolitanism, many ethnicities and faiths coexisting together, with its beautiful contrasts and combinations. I grew up there, in one of its small boroughs called Kochangadi. This Muslim dominated waterfront settlement had – and still has – a few Jewish, Ezhava and Christian families. Apart from a synagogue and a few churches, there are several small and big mosques that belong to different ethnic groups or factions of Muslims.

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Sepia Tinted Memory

PhotoMail — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 09:59:29 +0000

Our family name is Pattanam, an acronym for the Tamil word Patthanathukarar (which means ‘hailing from a port town’). We could have been from one of the earliest seaports of Tamilakam (the region corresponding to the present South India) such as Kaveripoompatanam (Chola Port Pukar) or Kayalpattanam (Pandyan Port Korkai). Trading took my forefathers to different parts of Tamilakam and they eventually settled in Mattancherry.

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