Remembering Gutlu
(Prabuddha Dasgupta)
K.S.Radhakrishnan
In 93, when I shifted my studio to Chattarpur, he loved the space, finally happy
about “the light I want!”, he would often do his own work there. He’d call me and say,
“Aaj tu kaam nahi karega. I have work there. No sculpture today”. I remember once
he’d got Payal Jain’s products to shoot, and he wanted to shoot it in all the mess and
mayhem of the studio. These unpredictable ambiences he chose for his shoots really
went into evoking the new quality of expression he came to be symbolic of, for releasing
commercial photography from the shackles of the same old stereotypical shots, for
setting it free. Everyone else looks for a created space, whereas he would invent his
own. When I would call him to shoot a sculpture I’d just finished, he’d come and ask me
what I was doing there. “Tu jaa, I’ll shoot”. He wanted to be undisturbed and develop
his own connection with it–How he accentuated what was in front – he was not that
interested in the destination, it was the journey that mattered the most to him. That is why the process that unfolded
in my studio was beautiful to him – as important to him, if not more, than the final finished sculpture. He showed me
what was unseen to my eye, through his photographs. He showed me an animate dimension to my own work.
I remember Gutlu coming to Paris for the first time in 1991, on the Yves St. Laurent assignment, while I was there
working for my solo show in Paris. We had a fantastic time together, like married bachelors! We would laugh together, walk
a lot; get lost in a city at 2 am! I would show him around Paris, just as he did in Delhi and I took him to the photographers
I knew there. I had an apartment where I would often cook lunch for us, because I love to cook (and he’d be the last one
to make any effort there!). He loved my Malabar Chicken – chicken and rum made a great evening for us. And then, we’d be out and about. With its 900 galleries, you could never get enough of Paris! So, it was all walking, with a purpose. Doing it on my own was so very different from doing it with Gutlu. Our differences, I suppose, brought us closer…We were in Paris
together many times; I remember Tania pushing a pram in Paris. I remember Lakshmi with him, in Paris. (Lakshmi and I would talk in Malayalam. She would make some fantastic dishes and they’d come over to my Goa house, and we’d all
sit around and eat.) While shooting, he would make such intuitive, spontaneous decisions which seemed like a lot of thought had gone into it. How can anyone create such magic? So effortless! So often, he would have the camera clicking away, while his eye had the image in focus, and get such beautiful photographs because he knew that the camera was just the instrument, he was taking the picture. Most photographers carry equipment and lights and roam around with
assistants for it all. But, he was completely on his own, worked with the existing natural light, make the best of it, and work with the light coming from his own mind. The magic already exists, it’s there; many people look at it, but how many see it?