Plus

Plus

“War and Peace” in Sri Lanka is an an exhibition of photographs of the photojournalists of the Foreign Correspondents’ Association to be held July 1 - 11 at Barefoot Gallery, Galle Road. Colombo 4.
Perhaps the best chronicle of our times
Review by Rajpal Abeynayake
If there is such a thing as going behind the scenes of Sri Lanka's conflict (and of course the ceasefire that followed) perhaps it's through the medium of photojournalism. But cameramen take pictures and seldom talk.

Yet for the exhibition put on by the photojournalists of the Foreign Press Association, photojournalists have taken some devastatingly powerful pictures --and they end up talking too. Most pictures hung on the walls of the Barefoot Gallery are of high technical quality, of superior news value and they also contain a narration of the private thoughts of the photographer.

When Rajiv Gandhi for instance was almost hit on the head by a soldier at an honour guard in Colombo, there was only one still photograph that was taken of the incident. Sena Vidanagama the photographer says that the TV cameramen were blocking his view and he didn't in his wildest dreams imagine that he would come away with a photograph that hit the front pages of most dailies in the world.

Five photojournalists who are FCA members have lent their work for the exhibition and they are Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi of Reuters Dominic Sansoni a freelancer for a range of international magazines including Time, Gemunu Amarasinghe of AP, Sena Vidanagama staff photographer of AFP and Syriantha Walpola of The Hindu.

"The photo exhibition portrays the death, destruction, grief and hardship of the war contrasting with the images of hope and renewal during the largely-peaceful atmosphere of the recent past,'' say the organizers.

Looking at these pictures, one should feel they really do not need to hold a brief for the display. The pictures speak magnificently for themselves. Who wouldn't want girls prancing about on the beach instead of infants mutilated by a machete? The exhibition also should come perhaps with a Parental Guidance warning. Some of these pictures I suspect were never really published anywhere. There is too much gore and carnage in them for that, and this definitely is not for the faint hearted.

But, photographers wield the camera and in the end they carve out images for posterity that most actors in past events would have rather relegated to the dustbins of time.

In this way theirs is an unadulterated rendition of the recent history of this country - theirs is the authentic chronicle. In all, it is an exhibition that photo buff or the ordinarily curious should not miss….

Back to Plus