Hyderabad’s Photographers Make A Case For Looking Closely

Visitors admiring the prints on the exhibition at State Gallery of Art in Hyderabad (ETV Bharat)

The World Photography Day Exhibition 2026, organised by the Hyderabad Centre for Photography (HCP) on the State Gallery of Art at Madhapur in Hyderabad, brings collectively pictures by 43 photographers from Telangana, providing guests a slightly good cause to do the other of what the web has educated us to do: decelerate and look. The exhibition opened on August 16, forward of World Photography Day on August 19, and stays on view till August 26.

There isn’t any single type of {photograph} right here, which is a part of the enjoyable. There are documentary photographs, avenue pictures, portraits, landscapes, structure and wildlife. There are pictures involved with folks and pictures involved with locations. Some are about moments that occur as soon as. Others are about issues that appear unusual till any individual has the nice sense to have a look at them in a different way.

Also learn: Hyderabad’s Photography Community Is Coming Together For World Photography Day

Photography has by no means actually been one factor. It will be journalism, artwork, reminiscence, proof, journey diary, obsession or just an excuse to face in the course of someplace attention-grabbing and wait. For HCP Director Aquin Mathews, the exhibition is “a way of bringing together the different ways photographers in Telangana are seeing their surroundings.” The pictures mirror the tradition and life of various areas, whereas additionally demonstrating simply how broad the native images group has turn out to be.

If you’ve gotten ever questioned what makes somebody a photographer slightly than merely an individual with a digital camera, photographer Firdaus F Mistry has a helpful reply. “These days,” he factors out, “almost everyone has a camera in their pocket. But the real photographer is someone who can look at an ordinary scene and work out how to turn it into something worth looking at.” Anyone can {photograph} a avenue. The troublesome bit is photographing the road in such a method that somebody who wasn’t there needs that they had been.

Mistry has been related to HCP for 3 years and has watched the organisation promote images for greater than a decade. For him, the annual exhibition has turn out to be a possibility to see the work of photographers with totally different backgrounds, experiences and approaches.

“The gallery showing is a milestone for me. It is the first time my work is being showcased in a public exhibition. I was surprised that a photograph I love was selected for the exhibition. It is a single shot photograph I shot when I was living in Canada,” says exhibiting photographer Rahul Premchander.

There can be one thing significantly satisfying about seeing these pictures in print. We have turn out to be accustomed to seeing pictures on screens so small that an elephant can occupy three pixels if the elephant occurs to be standing on the mistaken finish of the body. Print modifications the connection. You can see texture, element and tonal variations that disappear on a telephone. You can stand in entrance of a picture with out having one other notification seem on the prime of the display screen.

Mistry believes the distinction is important. “The quality and detailing of photographs become much clearer when viewed as prints rather than on mobile phones or tablets,” he says.

{A photograph} is, in the end, one thing you have a look at. It shouldn’t be an Instagram put up ready to be favored. Mistry’s personal relationship with images started in childhood, when his father gave him a digital camera. What began as a passion finally grew to become a critical pursuit from 2019, when he started studying below mentor Saurabh Chatterjee. The good factor about images is that it would not essentially demand that you just abandon the remainder of your life with the intention to pursue it. Mistry continues to work whereas making time for images on weekends and through his travels.

In an period once we are surrounded by billions of photographs, it’s turning into more and more troublesome for a person {photograph} to demand our consideration. The 43 photographers represented right here aren’t competing with all the web. They are providing us 43 totally different invites to pause. One {photograph} might take you someplace you have by no means been. Another might make a well-recognized place look unfamiliar. A portrait might make you interested in a stranger. A documentary {photograph} might remind you that the world exists past your individual fast considerations. A panorama might make you realise that you’ve been taking a look at landscapes incorrectly all of your life. Somewhere amongst all of them, there could also be that one {photograph} that makes you cease for longer than you supposed.

Bigger Photographic Conversation Coming

The exhibition additionally arrives as a preview of types to an excellent bigger occasion on Hyderabad’s photographic calendar. Mathews has introduced that the twelfth version of the Indian Photo Festival, one in all India’s main images festivals, will happen from November 26, 2026 to January 3, 2027. That provides Hyderabad’s images group one thing else to sit up for as soon as this exhibition closes.

But for now, there are 43 photographers to see. The finest method to method the exhibition is to depart the technical vocabulary at dwelling. You needn’t know your aperture out of your ISO. You needn’t establish the digital camera or calculate the shutter velocity. Ask your self why the photographer selected that exact second. The digital camera might have taken the {photograph}, however the trying remains to be as much as you.

The pictures are on view on the Madhapur Art Gallery, Hyderabad, till August 26.

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