Waves

The masters of the crafts share their insights and photographs

- Rohinton Mehta

Please tell us about your journey into photography.

At my native place Warora, in District Chandrapur in Maharashtra, there was a photo studio on the way to my school. I used to see a middleaged person always doing something on a 3” x 3” semi-transparent plastic piece, using a pointed pencil. Sometimes I saw some odd-looking images on that plastic sheet and that middle-aged person was colouring on it with red colour. While going to and fro from school, that particular spot had become my favourite. Sometimes that person took objection to my lingering there. One day when he was not at his seat, I stepped up into the studio and peeped-in through a black curtain at the entrance. I noticed three/ four high-voltage bulbs flooding light on a couple sitting on the bench and the middle-aged person doing something with a metal box put up on a wooden tripod. That is the moment I got attracted to photography. At that time, the financial condition of my family could not permit me to even think about photography as a hobby, but at the same time I was good at drawing and painting which got me several awards in school competitions. After completing my graduation, I got a job as an accountant at Nagpur and I got my first camera – an Agfa Isoly II. One day while wandering around, I got an old book on photography for three rupees. That was my first ‘guru’ in photography. I then started covering family functions and tours. I used to buy the required chemicals from a photo store, and at night, used to develop my films in my bathroom. I also did black and white contact prints using a table lamp. That was my humble beginning in photography.