Into The Light

At 27, André J. Fanthome was the youngest photographer to receive the National Academy Award for Visual Art from the National Lalitkala Academy. A decade later, he is certainly not resting on his past laurels.

All in good time

My favorite and possibly the most important work so far happened at the most challenging time of my life. Just about a decade ago, due to an acute slip disk injury that left my left leg quite useless, I was confined to a flat in Gurgaon. The closest I got to the active outdoors was watching kids play in the park below my balcony. I’ve always been in love with light and shadow play, and somehow I guess the movement of the shadows as the sun rose and set registered on my mind. I didn’t really compose the photography in my mind prior to taking it. Based on the orientation of the sun I could just see the image come together and so the next day I put the camera on a tripod and got the two shots I had seen to create Samay, my all-time favorite work.

Lure of the camera

Photography for me began long before I held a camera! I grew up in an isolated tiny village in Eastern Bhutan where cars were a novelty. No TV, phone, or mobile, but what we did have was a huge library at the college where my parents taught. My father would make it a point to constantly supply me with a host of National Geographic magazines and other pictorial books on animals and even though there was no talk of a camera, I think this is where it all started.