Western Ghats News

Black and white magic
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2001 02:15:17 AM]
Most of Ian Lockwood’s teenage afternoons were spent hanging around Doveton’s Studio, the oldest photographic establishment in Kodaikanal. All school hiking expeditions and the budding photographer in him had a small Rollei as a constant companion.

Encouraged to record and interpret nature in black and white, now avid photographer and eco enthusiast Ian Lockwood is having an exhibition of his photographic works. On at the Bombay Natural History Society, The Western Ghats: Portrait and Panorama focuses on the biodiversity of the Western Ghats and their immense genetic reserve of plant and animal life.

About his passion for photography, which is shared by his entire family, the young photographer says, I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have a darkroom set up in one of the extra bathrooms (much to my mother’s annoyance). My parents were very tolerant of the innumerable times I lost my camera, or when it was dunked into a cold stream. They were pretty used to me wasting unaccountable rolls of film on bad exposures.

Originally from New England, Ian spent his formative years studying and exploring in the Palni Hills and for the last seven years he’s been teaching environmental science and photography in Bangladesh. My Hindi is not as good as my Tamil and Bengali, which is pretty powerful thanks to my days in Tamil Nadu and in Dhaka.

For him, the medium of black and white photography is the vehicle to promote a message of ecological concern. It seems farfetched to try and fuse art, photography and natural history appreciation into one exhibition but that is the goal of my exhibition.

And he fuses art and photography with tremendous dexterity to create a visually striking piece of art. Lockwood’s selection of images is designed to paint a portrait of this incredibly important yet highly-threatened part of India. The exhibition, which is on from October 12 to 25 at the Bombay Natural History Society, serves as an alarm call to citizens to protect the irreplaceable asset of India, the Western Ghats.