Clicking Spirit

Clicking Spirit 

A Small Note on Abul Kalam Azad photography  - jhony ml

mattachan's toddy shop   കള്ളുഷാപ്പ്  © Abul Kalam Azad2010 

Abul Kalam Azad is a well known photography artist. Fifteen years back, he left his cushy job as a senior photographer with the Press Trust of  India, only to become a photography artist. And he did become one. He had a few shows in India and abroad. Also had a solo with the Chakola’s Gallery in Kochi.Even before Azad became famous as an artist, he was famous amongst his friends for his arty deeds. He was very famous amongst the journalists as a press photographer as he was the one who brought the   pictures from the interiors of the vandalized Hazrat Bal in Kashmir.Azad has several firsts to his credit. From a minority community, he articulated the issues of related to minority communities as well as those of ‘minoritism’ as an ideological position. But he never fell into the traps of minority culture. Perhaps, that is one reason why he is not much celebrated by our cutting edge art community.By mid-90s, after resigning from the Press Trust of India, Azad went to Paris, supported by a scholarship. Azad went to Paris Monsieur Azad came back from France. He was a changed man. He even said, he read Barthes’ Mythology in original French and said there was a full length chapter on Kathakali masks in it. 

mattachan's toddy shop   കള്ളുഷാപ്പ്  © Abul Kalam Azad  2010 

That’s how Azad deals with people. He cannot be outwitted because in an argument with him, he negates you completely with logic and then agrees with you totally by the end of the argument. He is a true Kochi-ite in that sense. They can use logic to floor you and then they take you to a surreal world of fantasies and no logic.Often Azad takes reality by force and settles it into the world of stories and story telling. When he was in Delhi, he used to move around with real people who fought for secularism. But Azad’s life was surreal even then. He sang Kawalis with the Kawals and chatted up with politicians. He could have fallen for the growing minority politics of the northern belt. But his surrealistic thinking saved him.Azad is a portraitist/portraiture in its true sense. He likes to take/treat photographs in black and white or sepia tones. He is a collector of images, with an archivist’s precision. When he pastes the images of gods upside down on the wall or when he exhibits the eerie presence of cows in the middle of roads and historical sites, he filters the images through the color of time. He is political in visual way. Somehow, our art critics still fail to see him.Azad impersonates other people and that is a perennial need of an artist to be in other’s garbs. One day I saw him an exhibition opening. 

mattachan's toddy shop   കള്ളുഷാപ്പ്  © Abul Kalam Azad2010  

I thought he was a professor from university, complete with a half jacket and a pipe on lips. But it was Azad. Once I met him in a bar in Kochi. It was difficult to discern him from the five other people with him as all of them looked like Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, with dreamy eyes and long pointed beards.Abul Kalam Azad’s portraits of Kerala and Kerala people would stand the test of times. The photographs that you see along with this article are the best examples of it. While going through them, I thought they are the registrations of a dead culture, captured in film long back. However, the film posters and a calendar in the frame proved that they are from the recent times. But in Azad’s hands, images get the quality of timelessness.They call it Kallu Shap. In English it is Toddy Shop, a place frequented by drunkards, casual drinkers, anarchists, pleasure hunters and tourists. Toddy, the manna tapped from coconut trees, tapioca dishes and fish- nothing can excel this 

mattachan's toddy shop   കള്ളുഷാപ്പ്  © Abul Kalam Azad2010  

combination.Azad’s photographs tell us that a Toddy shop is not just a toddy shop. It is a culture. But to see that culture you need an ‘eye’; an eye for beauty, detail and history. Look at those bottles, collected from sources but with a strong sense of brand and uniformity. Look at those photographs of people pasted on a wooden structure. Are they the defaulters? Or are they the ones who left the place for ever? Is it a museum of memories?People may differ about Azad and his character. But everyone agrees on one thing; he is a photography artist of all times. He is like a wander amongst the living and the dead alike. He holds his camera and he knows when to click, where to click and how to click. He is an anarchist with a discipline of his own. He may be unconventional in certain sense. But what is our problem? His art is good and his pictures make someone like me to write something like this and perhaps, a book on his works. Why not? 
Text  © Jhonny ML noted Art historian / photographs © Abul Kalam Azad / pigment prints 2011

mattachan's toddy shop   കള്ളുഷാപ്പ്  © Abul Kalam Azad2010  

Lion’sPath and the Himalayan Summer A write up inspired by the photographs of Abul Azad / by Johny ML Distances are calling. When I see those photographs send to me by my wandering friend. Another prods me to go, leave my desk, books and this binding routine. He asks me to travel, see the trees, rivers, hills, snow caped mountains. Beautiful they are I know as I have stood right in the middle of the virgin forests in Uttaranchal and harked for silent conversations between trees that have been standing unchallenged there for ages. Then a friend says, had they been blessed with the capacity to move, they would have chased us away, perhaps beaten us up well enough to sidestep another invitation to trek along the virgin paths. Once upon a time the mountains and trees had wings. They could fly. It became a nuisance as they started interfering in human and divine affairs. Hence, some gods decided to chop off their wings. Ever since they have been standing there in the places they landed wounded. One day the forest will come around you and choke you. The mountains will roll over you and make you nothing. I think of those friends who have left everything behind and wander amongst the forests and mountain. They wander as if their life has no meaning in the cities. Somewhere I read the cities entertain craziest amongst people helping to evolve them to be true multicultural centers. Equal number of crazy people wanders amongst the woods searching for the meaning of their life or adding color to their craziness.They see lands, lonely trees standing like monks standing in the middle of panchagni (five fires) in penance. But these trees stand in the middle of fields. They see life everywhere but in the form of metaphors; donkeys walking by the way side, as closer to the wall as possible as if they were telling the world that they were not there to offend anyone, hurt anybody’s sentiments, any body’s religious faith, anybody’s logic, not even anybody’s poetry. None knows who has left this scooter here. Is there a couple who came by it? Have they gone to make it out in the fields? Does it belong to the owner of the field? Or the rider’s bladder was so full that he could not hold it any longer? This is the problem of reading too much of Heidegger or John Berger. The images could make you write as big a text as Das Capital. In the valley there flourishes a life, the life of the local people and for them the beauty of their location is always translated as the economics of life. They live calm, calculative and conservative lives, opening only a part of their lives and facilities to the loners who come in search of peace and solace. Life goes on as it does elsewhere.Some seek solace in religion. Some in procession and some in business. And some others in para-gliding.Who would not like to break the tip of those peaks where snow has sculpted an enormous image of eternity? And the serenity down there, the shack that would make any married man think about an ideal place in the world, to run away and hide. You feel like singing with your imaginary friend and run amongst these trees. Only hypocrites will tell you they don’t see much of Bollywood. Perhaps, they always dream living in Bollywood. Leave them alone.One day, some day I too will wander amongst these trees. Alone.One is prepared when life has a purpose. And one prepares for an impending duel, training memories as the only tool. One withdraws and exits when the life’s purpose is done. Wanderers too have a purpose.© Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011 © Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011. © Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011. © Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011. © Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011. © Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011. © Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011.

Lion’sPath and the Himalayan Summer      
A write up inspired by the photographs of Abul Azad  /  by Johny ML 

Distances are calling. When I see those photographs send to me by my wandering friend. Another prods me to go, leave my desk, books and this binding routine. He asks me to travel, see the trees, rivers, hills, snow caped mountains. Beautiful they are I know as I have stood right in the middle of the virgin forests in Uttaranchal and harked for silent conversations between trees that have been standing unchallenged there for ages. Then a friend says, had they been blessed with the capacity to move, they would have chased us away, perhaps beaten us up well enough to sidestep another invitation to trek along the virgin paths. 

Once upon a time the mountains and trees had wings. They could fly. It became a nuisance as they started interfering in human and divine affairs. Hence, some gods decided to chop off their wings. Ever since they have been standing there in the places they landed wounded. One day the forest will come around you and choke you. The mountains will roll over you and make you nothing.  I think of those friends who have left everything behind and wander amongst the forests and mountain. They wander as if their life has no meaning in the cities. Somewhere I read the cities entertain craziest amongst people helping to evolve them to be true multicultural centers. Equal number of crazy people wanders amongst the woods searching for the meaning of their life or adding color to their craziness.They see lands, lonely trees standing like monks standing in the middle of panchagni (five fires) in penance. But these trees stand in the middle of fields. They see life everywhere but in the form of metaphors; donkeys walking by the way side, as closer to the wall as possible as if they were telling the world that they were not there to offend anyone, hurt anybody’s sentiments, any body’s religious faith, anybody’s logic, not even anybody’s poetry. None knows who has left this scooter here. Is there a couple who came by it? Have they gone to make it out in the fields? Does it belong to the owner of the field? Or the rider’s bladder was so full that he could not hold it any longer? This is the problem of reading too much of Heidegger or John Berger. The images could make you write as big a text as Das Capital. In the valley there flourishes a life, the life of the local people and for them the beauty of their location is always translated as the economics of life. They live calm, calculative and conservative lives, opening only a part of their lives and facilities to the loners who come in search of peace and solace. Life goes on as it does elsewhere.Some seek solace in religion. Some in procession and some in business. And some others in para-gliding.Who would not like to break the tip of those peaks where snow has sculpted an enormous image of eternity? And the serenity down there, the shack that would make any married man think about an ideal place in the world, to run away and hide.  You feel like singing with your imaginary friend and run amongst these trees. Only hypocrites will tell you they don’t see much of Bollywood. Perhaps, they always dream living in Bollywood. Leave them alone.One day, some day I too will wander amongst these trees. Alone.One is prepared when life has a purpose. And one prepares for an impending duel, training memories as the only tool. One withdraws and exits when the life’s purpose is done. Wanderers too have a purpose.

© Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011

© Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011.

© Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011.

© Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011.

© Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011.

© Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011.

© Abul Kalam Azad and the album is titled Himalayan Summer 2011.