Beyond The Human Eye
– Aadya Baoni
“Photography enabled me to record with a camera the images seen by my eyes and then transform them to the perceived ones I desired, in a darkroom or with Photoshop.”
– Jyoti Bhatt
A wire mesh door opened to a wafting aroma of roasted gujarati food. Under the bright tube light the grey walls were glowing white. each inch of the wall was covered generously with paintings and photographs created by artists from every corner of the world. Jyoti Bhatt stood at the edge of the tile while his toes touched the cement that crisscrossed through the other, at the fluid interweave of a painter, printmaker and now a documentary photographer. dressed in a striped shirt, camel colored corduroy pants with black leather kohlapuris that left his toes naked, and shifted noiselessly across the floor. he delights you with his simplicity while discarding all elements of grandeur with a gentle flick of his wrist.
Photography started off as a necessity to facilitate drawings. It allowed him to stubbornly linger a while longer in the place he would otherwise get a brief glimpse of. “the camera is impartial” he claimed. the frame would capture every detail irrespective of the significance unlike the human eye while painting. “If I am interested in making your face, he explained, grasping a makeshift camera designed out of his fore fingers while focusing its lens with a gentle jerk of his hands around my face. “I refuse to look at your feet or hand,” he continued. “I realized that the camera recorded so many details that I sometimes opted to ignore but usually failed to notice.”he is an artist, blinking to miss the odd details of a complicated scene. “the camera started gradually replacing my pencil to make visual notes. It would capture all the nuances of visual attributes accurately.”he narrated an excerpt from the film Blow- Up by the Italian filmmaker michelangelo antonioni, where an ordinary photograph of a friend proved to be of significant importance. It revealed a murder taking place in the background when the image was zoomed into.
