Narratives on Nature

Narratives of Nature:
- through the eyes of the camera lens
unfiltered + filtered (augmented/AR):

In the words of the author of these photographs, Dr Debal Sen:
“The images presented here were garnered over a period of three decades. They took me from the high altitude lakes of Ladakh, to the glacial rivers of the high Himalayas, onto the lakes, rivers and wetlands of the baking plains of central India, across the puddles and pools of the great mangrove swamps of Orissa, West Bengal and the Andaman Islands, to culminate in the varied coastlines of the subcontinent”

And then summing up his experience of water as the subject through the idiom of shoreline, the author concludes:
The words are reminiscent of the photography of Ansel Adams who viewed life through the lens of Nature, choosing to see it unfiltered as the great wilds of the outdoors, with a protestant spirit that only Nature can wield.

Many decades removed from Ansel Adams, Dr Sen’s photography defies the urbane world of Kolkata where he resides and where he is a practicing cardiologist. It is difficult to imagine this cardiologist of such great repute be able to divide his time equally between the two critical aspects of his life: life-saving through health giving, for which he yields his medical skills; and life-saving through Nature-worship for which he wields his camera. And, in spite of the enormous temptation in today’s world of visual language to “touch up” and “air brush,” Dr Sen refrains from them all.
No wonder then, to experience these images, in the words of poet Corbin, is to “browse in the archives of the Earth.”

Now, fast forward to a world of young students from a school of technology and design, where photography is hugely adjunct to images being snipped, chopped and manipulated. Where, one shoots with cameras that are just phones. Where technology goes to “augment” one’s immediate reality. And where news of the unfiltered image is treated with utter disbelief.

In an attempt to bridge the two schools, indeed the two generations, we offer you the “unfiltered” as augmented reality (AR) – a technology that helps add a layer of motion to the otherwise two-dimensional.
Can the magic of AR weave into the magic of unfiltered photography to create a new awareness of Nature for the young (generation)?