FROZEN FRAMES

By Bharat Desai
(Ex Resident Editor,
The Times of India, Gujarat)

It has been said that a photograph has the incredible ability to tread simultaneously on two opposite ends of the spectrum – magic and stark reality.

This rings true of the work of award-winning freelance photographer from Bhopal, Prakash Hatvalne. His lens captures the magic that is India. Colours, as if freshly painted on canvas, jump out of the frames and moments are frozen just when it really matters. What you like about photographs is they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.

For all the lucid poetry that Prakash’s images exude, he is at the core, a photojournalist who shook the guts of his viewers with shocking images of the Bhopal gas disaster in 1984, by far the world’s biggest man-made industrial tragedy.

A stroke in May 2013, which paralysed parts of his body, threatened to end his quest to travel and capture life in its varied forms. But he fought back from the brink and embarked again on his journey to pursue his first love. This is his first exhibition after a long hiatus lasting 14 years. He had earlier held exhibitions in Bhopal, Mumbai, Gwalior and Oslo and won many national and international awards which took him to France, US, China, Indonesia and Thailand to receive his coveted prizes.

Prakash’s work spans a wide array of subjects like child marriages, tribal culture and customs, Ramnami sect, folk arts, rural women, etc.

I have had the good fortune and privilege of accompanying him on many assignments, covering thousands of miles by road in search of that one frame which would click and wow the world. Have observed at close quarters his eye for the extraordinary, dedication and discipline at work and restlessness till he got the composition right. He had an international viewership much before the digital world dawned as his images were carried in The Los Angeles Times, The Independent, The Times, The Guardian, Time magazine, The Telegraph, Gulf News and several Indian publications like India Today, Outlook, The Times of India etc.

“I love photographing people, though I also photograph landscapes. But there is no better landscape than a human face.”

“Without a human being in the frame, a photograph fails to make a connection,” says Prakash.

His name means Light and, as has been rightly said, “essentially photography is life lit up.”