Santhosh Pai’s quest to capture that quiet space between shadow and light

Photograph by Santhosh Pai

There is a gradation to Santhosh Pai’s life akin to the play of light and shadow seen in his work. Today he might be known for his photography, but Santhosh began his creative journey as a visual artist.

“I studied art informally under the guidance of artist Ramesh Rao in Udupi, even as I continued my education. I got into animation and I worked in that field for a couple of years before freelancing and working on illustrations,” says Santhosh, who shuttles between Bengaluru and Udupi.

Self photograph by Santhosh Pai

There was a time when Santhosh worked with NGOs, especially The Concerned for Working Children. “I worked on their publication for children and would also document some of their work. I travelled a lot on the job and most of the images in this exhibition are of different regions of Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Goa and the US.”

Santhosh says his interest in photography stemmed from documenting places he hoped to capture on canvas later. “After a while my photos started looking like paintings in terms of composition; the eye of an artist was evident in the image,” says Santhosh, who used to work with acrylic and watercolours.

Photograph by Santhosh Pai

Mind’s Eye comprises around 22 photographs taken by Santhosh from 2010 and there is a repertoire of stories chronicling the images shot during his many travels from that time.

“I had bought a DSLR camera just before COVID-19 struck and due to the lockdown it lay unused for two years. An artist organised an art camp at his house by the beach between the Mangalore and Kasaragode border, a region where monsoon causes heavy erosion every year. The road gets eaten up and the coastline is constantly changing.

Photograph by Santhosh Pai

“That day, the sky turned dark and I had to run a certain distance to get my shot and at the same time make sure I would be able to get back before it started raining. I didn’t want to ruin my new camera! The road was higher than the beach and a lot of it had caved in. I was standing on unsteady ground, but half the sky was golden and the other half had dark clouds with the sun peeping out,” says Santhosh, talking about the only one of his prints that is in colour as “it wouldn’t do it justice” to make it a black-and-white image.

He talks of another instance when he was in the right place at the right time. “I was in downtown Los Angeles surrounded by skyscrapers and I saw a bird with a twig in her beak, looking for a place to build a nest, circling above hundreds of homeless people camped on the streets.” That image is a part of this exhibition.

Santhosh says these limited editions of his photographs are numbered but not titled as “viewers should be able to take what they want from a work instead of being pushed into seeing them in a particular way,” especially since most of the images are dreamy and surreal, he adds.

Photograph by Santhosh Pai

Talking about his method, Santhosh says he shoots his images in colour using a digital camera and old manual lenses, processing them into black and white later. Though his works are mostly 6×6” and 10×10” in size, those specially printed for the show are 8×8” or 16×16” in dimension.

“I was just starting out when I visited an exhibition of one of my favourite photographers Michael Kenna, renowned for his black and white landscapes. He prints his own work after shooting them on film using a medium format camera. I wanted to see how my own work would look like in black and white.”

But for Santhosh its more about “contrasting” space with the object. “I’m trying to isolate it from the usual chaos of the canvas, focusing on what’s happening just off the frame to capture that quiet space,” he says, adding that his images are not shot in squares, but are taken later from the original composition.

The Mind’s Eye by Santhosh Pai will be on display at the MKF Museum of Art till June 25