The poetry of photography

There is a particular type of photographing which I like most.This is the photographing of a particular spatial situation consisting of several elements of living and non-living things acting out together in a single performance .In people photography we tend to focus on individual participants without looking at the overall functioning of all of them as participants in a spatial situation.I have tried photographing the marketplace ,the temple precincts,religious congregations etc.where such possibilities exist.But at the symbolic level where different elements participate to convey an emotive meaning or a subtle suggestion the situations available to us are much fewer because the symbolism is an after-event usually depending upon what the photographer likes to construct and is purely a matter of chance that such a fortuitous combination of the different elements is available to you.

Raghu Rai's photograph of the religious ceremony of the immersion of the Goddess Durga in the river Ganga in Kolkata is an outstanding example.(See the photograph below :On the banks of the Ganga )

Here the number of elements is unusually large but nearly all of them contribute to the spatial situation of the photograph.There is the river,the boat, the tree , the cow, the image of the Goddess and a woman participating in the situation.The beauty of the photograph arises largely from the different elements acting out together in a unique spatial situation.