The famous American photographer Ansel Adams once said, “Landscape photography is the photographer’s supreme test – and often his supreme disappointment.” It’s a line that sums up the quiet brutality of the genre, and Chennai-based photographer Srinivasan Periyathiruvadi instantly relates to it. “The challenge with landscape photography is that it requires a lot of patience,” he says. “You have to think about the composition, what to include, what to leave out.”
Srinivasan has been photographing forests since 2005 and has shown his work in several solo and group exhibitions. This week, he returns to The Folly, Amethyst with a new group of monochrome landscapes titled Mountain and Mugil, which were shaped during years of traveling through high-altitude terrain in Kashmir and Ladakh. His friend Jayanand Govindaraj would exhibit a series of abstract photographs that deliberately explored camera movement.
Srinivasan’s photographs render mountains, clouds and light almost meditative, inviting the viewer to slow down and dwell with the silence among the forms.
“I chose monochrome because it’s a challenge. Today, millions of color images are created on phones every minute. Black and white bars take them all away, and it leaves you with only tone, light and form. I wanted to experiment and see how people react to that on the walls,” he says.
A photo from Mountels & Mugil | Photo Courtesy: Srinivasan Periyathiruvadi
On display are 17 monochrome landscapes, printed by Srinivasan himself – a final step he considers part of the creative process rather than an afterthought. “For me, capturing, processing and printing are all equally important. A photograph is not complete until it is on paper,” he says.
Fourteen of the 17 photographs were shot on a digital achromatic camera – a device that captures photographs only in black and white. “There’s no information about color,” he explains. “Most people shoot in color and convert it later, but this camera just records tones, like in the old black-and-white film days. It forces you to think about light in a very different way.”
If Srinivasan’s images pursue stillness, Jayanand’s contribution to the show is one of movement, abstraction and a bit of deliberate blur. “He has been a long-time photographer since 1962,” he jokes, “shooting everything from family birthdays to wildlife on seven continents”.
A photo from Pairs | Photo courtesy: Jayanand Govindraj
For Jayanand, the shift toward abstraction began just before the pandemic, when he encountered the Field of Light installation in Uluru, Australia — consisting of acres of light bulbs that he was forced to photograph without a tripod. “I had to rethink everything,” he says. Back home, he continued experimenting at night, pursuing how plants, shadows, and passing light could merge into painterly lines. What emerges is Pairs – a series of abstract photographs placed side by side, sometimes clearly connected, sometimes barely so, prompting the viewer to discover the interaction between them.
Although abstraction is his current preoccupation, Jayanand’s propensity for photographing living subjects dates back to decades. The shift to non-literal fiction did not erase that history; This made it faster. “Photography is not about sharpness or equipment,” he says. “It’s about what you feel when you look at something.” It is a line of thought to which he often returns. For him the issue is not one of technical perfection but of emotional resonance.
A photo from Pairs | Photo courtesy: Jayanand Govindraj
Together, Srinivasan’s monochrome and Jayananda’s abstract landscapes make a good argument for the instinct behind light and shutter to slow down and look deeper. In a world full of color and movement, the exhibition demands a simple, almost old-fashioned approach: pause long enough for the image to meet you halfway.
Mountain and Mugil & Pairs will be performed at The Folly, Amethyst from 10am to 7.30pm from 21st to 23rd November. Entry is free.
published – November 19, 2025 04:01 PM IST