On seeing and being seen.

Hello.

I attended a Photography Workshop for the first time ever, and it was such an ethereal experience.

By now you know that words speak to me very closely, and when I saw the poster ; I knew I had to be there.

The workshop was called ~On seeing and being seen. Something so intangible and close to the kind of writing I do, so close to WHY I do the kind of writing I do. To tell a story and make people feel seen and hence loved.

So, I signed up.

On the day of the workshop, I had to get to the Art studio called the Sandbox collective. A building numbered 345, so home-like and quaint that Google didn't have it registered on Google maps.

They'd sent an email with a landmark with a peculiar spelling of a common Indian name, reflecting the confidence and freedom with which Indians claim to spell names to their whims and fancies xD

I typed on the Uber search box, it chose the location and that auto ride began.

I was wearing a white crop top with olive green palazzo and a long sharp boho-looking feather shaped metal earring I'd got from Bombay.

I sat in the auto and tried to practice mindfulness but the wind and thoughts kept crossing each other like long ribbons flying in the air.

After a bit of journeying, I reached an unfamiliar residential road with no trace of the landmark.

I looked around, I tried searching on maps again, Google misled me. I was lost.

I quickly called up the number given on the mail to seek the exact address and soon enough after a quick chat, I got the live location.

The auto driver was patient with me through the calls and figuring out where I had to be, and followed along with the new location shared. I reached a quiet residential street with quite some green.

The studio was hidden within a home so I called her up yet again, she said let me come out to receive you.

Aakriti Chandervanshi. A Girl called Yellow. The Workshop facilitator.

She walked out with a very welcoming energy and led me into this space which was so cathartic right from its threshold.

We had to leave our footwear in the verandah, just like we would at an Indian home.

I stepped in, I was fifteen minutes late but the workshop hadn't begun as they were chatting and waiting for all the participants to arrive. Two more walked in hurriedly after me.

And we were 8 in total.

I observed the space as I allowed my breath to even out from being late.

This studio was a place that had already been made home.

It was a place that made me feel both lost and found. Lost till I got here, and really found when I sat on that wooden chair with jute weaves.

An Old Bangalore home, a rustic Villa.

A beautiful front yard with plants lined on the floor, on the window sill and hanging in front of the door.

It had a shoe rack to its left and a long cream table to its right as soon as you entered.

All the walls had art. Some kind of sassy stickers, beautiful posters and a trace of something someone had once loved. Some kind of story.

The most fascinating part of it was they followed a practice of sticking masking tape at any favourite corner of the studio and leaving your name on it. It now carried names in unique handwriting of all the people who've walked into this space and breathed magic into it.

Sandbox collective had one common living room, three tiny rooms and a small kitchen with an extremely cute mini red fridge. 

One room out of the three was crafted to be a library. It was called The Feminist Library with many celebrated books and a tiny deep green comfortable seating and a circular wooden table accessible to even a 5 year old ,in height.

Before we began the workshop, Rabia introduced us to the space, what Sandbox does and a little introduction to Aakriti.

And before Aakriti could take over, Rabia added onto her share of words, and informed us that there were loos in each room. A small kitchen, if we wanted water or make coffee. 

Making coffee? Now, that was a personal act, something you would do at home. Or a place familiar enough for you to step into a kitchen, explore the glasses, coffee powder and brew some coffee on a flame.

The fact that they opened up their hearts and doors set the energy of the workshop, and made everyone feel at home. Really, at home. At ease. Without guards. 

It was a labour of love, an artist's studio where everyone was welcome -unbiased and rooted in making people feel like they belong.

The workshop began.

Introductions. We had to introduce ourselves with our name, one thing we love and one thing we hate. Delicate introductions that actually gave a glimpse to the kind of people this crowd composed of, without the punching weight of where we come from, where we belong or identities of what we do for a living.

We then began with an activity that explored words and emotions around photographing and viewing,

Love- Curiosity- Perspective - Therapeutic - Frame- Joy- Colour- Interpretation- Depth- Introspect- Muse- Evoke - Experience -Poetry and so on, words rolled out.

It was an extremely calming experience, to just witness what this art of photography meant for a bunch of people who were not professional photographers but carried a childlike interest, an intent of capturing a moment in time.

We gathered back onto our chairs and Aakriti began to speak, exploring repetition as a practice in photography.

We learnt that photography was the art of looking beyond what is visible, beyond what meets those big shiny eyes. Dwelling in something. Revisiting. And then, capturing.

Techniques intermingling at junctions. And what followed was incredible newness. 

Ideas. 

Lately I've been glancing and holding hands with ideas, still babies- but I am harbouring them with hope that they will grow into beautiful passion projects.

And here, in this workshop, I just tumbled onto a comfortable ground where I found gold beneath.

Each idea was so quirky, I would have never thought of that.

It was like an open space that welcomed being stupid, being a little crazy, and going a little out of the territory of your mind.

We gazed at photographs of different photographers, trying to understand some techniques.

Each photograph felt like a muse to me, poetry was waking up inside of me and I just had words fall out and tumble down like pearls. I couldn't write them all down as we glided through the slides but some interesting ideas stuck around. I just want to journal them here for they could fascinate someone and place them in wonder like it did to me.

We learnt about a photographer named Camilo Jose Vergara, he had documented Architectural facades of a building every year over a decade. One photograph , ten years. 

The frame and angle being constants, that facade was captured in its wins and losses to nature over a decade.

Second, Hayahisa Tomiyasu, a Japanese exchange student in Germany, observing German people from a cultural glance.

He observed from his dorm room that there was an abandoned table tennis set up on grounds behind. Everything other than table tennis happened around that table- people drying clothes, people using it as a support to work out, little children hopping and jumping on top of it, a man taking rest mid-cycling and so on and so forth. And this photographer decided to capture all of it with people as his subjects and that table tennis set up as his context. And what came out were beautiful stories through changing seasons and a constant object for emotional support.

Third, Loes Heerink, A Dutch photographer who was fascinated by Vietnam and its markets. On reaching Vietnam, she realized how extremely crowded and chaotic the markets get, stopping her from clicking a picture with just what she wanted to capture.

She didn't want distractions around, so she shifted her perspective. She stood on her favourite bridge in Hanoi and created a series called ~Vendors from above.

Just the vendors with their Vietnamese hats, piles of apples, oranges and produce they hawked.

We looked at photographs by Indrajit Khambe. Such play and colour in each photograph.

He had made a dog look bigger than a mountain in one and a monkey's tail curl and frame a tree top in another.

He had clicked photographs of women on an old stair going up, with softness, in all their grace without revealing their identity or features of their face. With a delicate gaze. Every photograph carried a story and he worked around local communities, making every place his own. Leaning on for strength and growing with the people he captures.

He had quoted that what you're looking at is way more important than the device.

Vinita Barretto

She had clicked pictures of almost every other moment of her day. Whatever she passed by, she views with a unique eye.

Taking nature onto herself, clicking pictures of decay and life, harbouring what is around her little Goan village.

She had a series of observing hands, photographs of young, old, worried and free hands.

All the pictures had a sense of loneliness beneath the solitude that stayed between the viewer and the photographer and the photograph.

Aakriti Chandervenshi 

The host herself, we discussed and listened to the stories of capturing something as innate as land.

She described her days in Nepal- Studying Photography as an International exchange student there, just after having finished Architecture from Mumbai, during that phase when she wanted to trot away from anything Architecture.

She stayed there for a semester and shot photographs of the land that was haunted by its past and authorities snatching it away, claiming it.

She interacted with the locals and their old photo albums and went in search of the same landscape, most of them had been trodden and badly left behind and lured by the officials in the name of development.

Her photographs from the series Letters from the Valley helped the locals win their land back and that was a powerful story of using art as evidence for justice.

I witnessed a slide of a girl who had created a series of all the autos she sat in, another human who had captured just numbers on a photowalk, a fellow participant who wanted to click the insides of fridges as a doorway to get to know someone. Someone who clicked one polaroid a day for 19 years till he passed, his bestfriends have created a website called Some Photos of that Day.

Just absolute madness and permission to be stupid. The permission we all never knew we needed.

A childlike wonder unlocked within.

And, through it all, right from the beginning, I was actually smiling like Amir Khan from 3 idiots.

“Actually sir, Bachpan se chahta tha ki aise padhu, aaj yahan baitha hoon toh Mazza aa raha hai sir.”

Big stains of my Architectural internship kept crossing my mind in a dragged slowness. A contrast reality speaking to its opposite.

As much as I don't regret that phase in my life- it gave me a flowing clarity on what I truly seek, despite the vision it left me with; it still haunts me.

Chained to a lifeless plain desk in an Architectural firm, work compounding with each day, a constant gaze from the CCTV and daunting eyes behind a spectacle from a glass room,  no phones till 7 PM, no holidays, a job that didn't come intuitively to me, a job where I felt like the most stupid person in a room- which I've never been earlier, a phase that shattered my self esteem, days that sucked my soul out. The growing realization that I love Architecture but not for designing. I am more fluent at describing it, travelling for it. I felt trapped, absolutely no conversations with humans were allowed in that office room, month after month- life would demand to be reclaimed frailly on weekends, a phase that laughs at me and haunts me with the monstrous days - all of this on one screen of my mind. The Past.

On the other screen of my mind, the Present.

An intimate group of artists, architects, writers all sitting in a quaint home like studio, listening to a photographer describe, exclaim and bring alive a picture. People genuinely connecting with one another, talking about travel, scars, subtle and dark moments of life, friendships, forests- just things that make you feel alive. Work, that made me feel alive. A room where art spilled out, out of a recognised mutual love- for life.

I felt so alive.

Every single day of my internship, I used to look at a list I'd made mid breakdown one night. Things I would do after April 20th, the last working day of my internship.

That list consisted of all things freeing, exciting, massively or remotely related to writing. Art- Writing-Travel-Pottery- Museums - Talks- Heritage walks- Photography and just events. Experiences that made life eventful, days where I felt full of life.

And I made it. I made it through that internship with my resilience, a patient mentor, the hidden kindness of that Architect and now, I am living that life I dreamt of, the freedom where I can attend whatever I want to attend whenever I want to. Feeding that free spirit of my soul. 

And that is exactly how I felt in this room, attending a Photography Workshop on a Wednesday, fulfilling, so seen and spoken to.

I remember this workshop by the visual of a group of women, harnessing creative energies through dialogue, making photographs, making edits, understanding curation, the sound of vulnerability, peeking into the emotion behind each picture, weaving stories from photographs clicked in 24 hours as an exercise and the taste of gifted ginger cookies.

When it was time to leave, a fellow participant, offered to drop me halfway home.

We walked a bit to her parked car and I sat in the front with the seatbelt on. There was a large gush of safety in the air. I felt safe, I felt seen and I had a beautiful drive with a stranger , listening and understanding her story. And telling mine in wisps, in turns.

Talking to her made me realize that every human here had made it on a weekday, for a two day workshop. Some hadn't chosen the corporate world, some had left it behind. Every person carried multiple passions and projects and shares of confusion and clarity. Artists, Writers, Historians, Handmade Collage makers, Illustrators, Freelancers, absolute creative seekers all in one human, all in one room. People who yearn to do more and more workshops, art, create, connect with life and take time out for the soul, to sustain. To make meaning out of life.

Most people took some time to answer when asked the question ~So what do you do for a living?

"Uhm, Give me a minute, I do many things." They all fell into that category of what I am, what I dream of. 

An Architect who does more. (Even though some weren't Architects.) Just, humans who do more than one thing. Humans who had fallen in love with art, with being some kind of an artist.

Every person in that room carried a gripping shadow of being called misfits somewhere in their journey of figuring out their identities, by the world or the voice within. But in that room of the ~On Seeing and Being Seen cohort, there was a deep seated belongingness and by the end of two days, I knew that feeling had traversed and reached the shore of each being.

This workshop was extremely beautiful because it felt like we shared life like cake, the delicacy, joy and vulnerability of life.

She taught us to be stupid and click photographs till we feel a sunset in our chest again.

A Girl called Yellow, you gave us each a canvas and we inevitably, willingly painted it with different shades of yellow. 

To finding yellow everywhere we go. To receiving yellow, receiving joy.

Love.

Vajj©

Picture Credits- Pascal Companion Illustration from Pinterest