ISSUE 2 | THINKING SPACES
Everything gets balanced
PROFILE
- Prakash Ghai is a Jaipur based photographer who captures simple yet creative photographs with Minimalism as a core theme, since December 2012.
- He also promotes minimalist photography of other photographers worldwide, via a brand page @LearnMinimalism on Instagram, which so far has received 5,50,000 submissions globally under the hashtag #LearnMinimalism.
- He has taken various workshops in Jaipur and organized photo-walks and meetings of photographers.
- He had also been jury for various photography competitions for various institutions and various other online and offline competitions organized both locally and globally.
ARTICLE
- Mine has been a constant journey of finding myself. I started off as a management person tried my hands on a few corporate jobs and then the I realized that it was time to return to my nest and I took over the family business. It did not take much long before I realized that this was not what I wanted to do. While I was learning about the nuances of my business One day I was required to click a few images for my store and that is when I met my new best friend and life partner, ‘My Camera’. Standing behind the lens I felt a sudden surge of independence and I could sense my perception change about things around me and the way I was seeing them. This led to me clicking more and more. I started off by clicking the usual “New Photographer” kind of images, people, dogs, lights and started coming up with cliched titles.
Fallen leaf
Source – Author
- Once again I did not feel the connection with what I was doing. But my bond with my camera had thickened by then and I just went out for a walk with her. That evening I remember very distinctly that I clicked anything and everything that drew my attention. I observed that there was something nice about the images I had clicked that day and I decided to upload them on my Facebook page and to my surprise a lot of people, friends, family, and even some people I did not even know began to comment of them and they too had found the pictures interesting. It made me ponder about what was it that made these images interesting or likeable and I began researching on the genre of the pictures. As though in a moment of serendipity I stumbled upon the term ‘ Minimalist Photography’ and it felt as though I had found my calling. Even before I realized I was on a path of introspection and it dawned on me that I was drawn towards minimalism as a result of my lifestyle.
Bird vs Lines
Source – Author
- I realized that I live in a maximalist environment. My shop is filled with a billion things, I meet hundreds of people while I work and also I live with my big family. It is true that the universe balances everything I have a maximalist life which eventually found a balance in my minimalist art. More often than not I have been confronted with the question of what guides my craft? What inspires me? What is my work place? How do I compose my thoughts ? The honest answer to all these questions is my subconscious . Never have I decided on a day or date to go for my shoots, it has always been intuitive. I rely very heavily on my subconscious to think and click because for me my images are my body’s way of making up for what it is deficient of. I believe very strongly that all of us today are leading a very maximalist life and we tend to miss-out on the subtleties and flavours of life under all the clutter that surrounds us. It was a moment of revelation when I discovered what the subconscious could do for me. I was no more bogged by my surroundings and I very strongly believe that minimalism is the need of the hour for us to sustain for the future.
Obstacles
Source – Author