The camera he received was an unexpected present. A friend of his father, perhaps as repayment to favour, brought down a beautifully packed little camera bag that contained a Praktica B200, and two lenses, a 50mm and a 135mm. That was the second important step in his photography journey. The first was getting the membership of the National Photographic Art Society in 1989.
The year 1991 was Dr Mangalanath Udukala’s freshman year at the Colombo Medical Faculty. His little camera helped him to earn a prominent place among the photography enthusiasts of the Faculty. In the same year, he completed his three-year diploma at the National Photographic Art Society.
“My final year dissertation for the diploma was a thesis on the progression of paintings and photographs. By 1995 I had an award-winning collection of photographs that had been honoured at national level competitions. On the 25, 26, and 27 of August 1995, fifty of these photographs were exhibited at the Lionel Wendt Gallery and I named the exhibition Nimesha (Moments),” Dr Udukala recalls.
Dr Mangalanath Udukala recently had his latest exhibition of photographs named Nimesha at the Lionel Wendt Gallery.
Although those images were not on a single theme, he believed they had beautiful and meaningful moments crystalized on print, hence the name 'moments'. At the time he knew nothing about Henry Cartier Bresson or the idea of 'Decisive Moment'. However, looking back at them now, he feels most of the images of Moments - 1995 belonged to a hastily urbanising era during which travel as well as the documentation of travel with small cameras started to become quite popular.
Except for a few seniors in the photography field, no one showed much of an interest in the exhibition. Dr Udukala believes living in an island where a culture of dialogue and critique on photography, art and artistic expression via images was non-existent while being oblivious to what was happening elsewhere in the world of art would have contributed to this lack of interest.
“Moments 2019 is a set of visions that got unveiled in front of my eyes while I was travelling to many parts of the world with my family; I felt they were too good to be left alone without being documented!”
The people in the images of Moments - 2019 are those who have momentarily unloaded the weight of their labour and livelihoods. The leisure they are enjoying, their smiles or the thoughtfulness that you see in the images is perhaps an integral part of their daily struggle in particular and of entire mankind in general.
“I wanted to make Moments-2019 a narrow conceptual bridge to a definitive aesthetic-political terrain rather than a pseudo artistic endeavour that completely hinders the true purpose of photography. I personally believe this approach towards content, and the relative lack of overzealous formal manoeuvres is a departure from contemporary Sri Lankan street photography.”
Endless editing to achieve a supposed formal perfection is a trend in neo-pictorialism. As per Ed Peters, a contemporary New York Street Photographer, this approach creates constructed abstractions.
Dr Udukala believes that this approach destroys the true documentary as well as the socio-political value of the visual expression. Most of the images of Moments 2019 are uncropped images. Even the few cropped ones still retain the original aspect ratio making them stay true to what he saw through the viewfinder. No attempt has been made to beautify these images and push them to the realm of neo-pictorialism.
These images differ from contemporary press photographs due to the lack of intent in telling stories. Dr Udukala has not tried to push ideologies via these images.
“Instead I wish the viewer will see the multifacetedness of these images and grasp the complexities in expression as well as the interpretation. In a way, this is an attempt to stay true to the documentary nature of photography and not to become a victim of neo-pictorialism.”
These images will reiterate the natural socio-political documentary nature of travel photography. These will show a new dimension and a path to the contemporary young Sri Lankan photographer who tries to be another glittering star of the photography field while unknowingly becoming a victim of neo-pictorialism without understanding the purpose of visual expression.
Igniting a dialogue in the mind of the viewer and opening doors to a complete aesthetic experience is the intention of Moments 2019.
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