The one that got away – Kesara Ratnavibhushana
Kesara Ratnavibhushana is an artist and photographer, with a practice in Colombo. The son of the architect Anura Ratnavibhushana, he grew up in an environment of famous talents, including the textilist Barbara Sansoni, and Geoffrey Bawa. Arthur C Clarke was the chief guest at his first exhibition.
After training in London, where he became the SHUNT vaults official photographer, he returned to Sri Lanka in 2008. Since then he has taught at the Academy of Design, been the Photographer in Residence of the Chamber Music Society of Colombo, and undertaken countless reportage, wedding, and architectural photography commissions – among them, Aishwarya Rai, the Galle Literary Festival, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, and Mahela Jayawardene’s Colombo home.
He is currently working on a book of his reportage work, in tandem with a digital showcase of his first 15 years as a photographer and a series of new artworks based on botanical and architectural themes.
The one that got away
‘In 2005, I was on my way to uni, on the DLR, and I saw a plume of smoke somewhere over East London, and thought “That is calling me!”
So I got off at Canning Town, and walked through miles of industrial estates and junkyards – this I Am Legend sort of scene – and I found these two skinheads, and figured I’d try my luck asking them how I could get to the fire. They were kind of indifferent, so I carried on a bit, and then I hear this guy shouting “Oi! Photo-man!” and I turn round, and I see him running towards me. I assumed, at best, I was about to lose my camera. But he turned out to be the caretaker of the Keir Hardie Estate. So I had my local fixer!
It was this recycling yard that had gone up in flames, and there were gas cylinders going up a hundred feet, and the Fire Brigade were vigorously waving us off. I grabbed a few good pictures – including this really apocalyptic shot of a bridge just disappearing into the fire – but then we discovered we’d come to a place where there was a canal preventing us from going any further, and now our exit was just this wall of thick black smoke filled with rubber and other toxic stuff. That was the first time I thought perhaps I was about to die. The only thing to do was just run through it and hope, so we did. Ruined a perfectly good jacket; but we made it out of there.
Two motorbike policemen in their hi-viz had blocked off a nearby residential road: you know, Victorian red-brick terraced houses. There was no traffic, everyone was inside, and I got this amazing picture of this Biblical column of smoke billowing up above the rooftops. If I’m not mistaken it was something like the largest industrial fire in London since the Second World War. And no other photographer got near it.
But three years later, more or less to the day, I returned to Sri Lanka. And all the CDs that had these photos on were lost in transit.’
The shot that he got
‘My friend Varun, an old Colombo schoolmate, was getting married. He’s from the Sindhi community, who are originally from India. His bride-to-be was Indian, from Pune, and they flew me up there to shoot reportage.
Now, Indian weddings are different from Sri Lankan weddings. There were 4000 people at the final day of this one – after five days of celebrations! It was in this development complex called Amanora, and the furthest building on that estate was on the horizon. The event itself was in a mini stadium, with theatre-style seating and this giant stage: big screens and all that jazz. And they had this stretch of red carpet, the longest I’ve ever seen. The groom comes in on this horse – at 8:30 in the morning, in a dusty suburb of Pune – and they dance him in, and there’s this whole spectacle happening. And that’s the actual marriage itself: that’s the serious part!
They had about 15 Indian photographers covering all this stuff – but what the family really liked was that I’d gotten details – not just of them, but of things like the décor, the space, the atmosphere – that their regular photographers hadn’t. These guys had done a very professional job; but despite all that coverage and attention, I was still able to find a level of intimacy. It’s reportage that enables me to do that. Little things like the flowers above the marriage ceremony. His mother-in-law, in particular, just liked the fact these things were noticed. And then here’s Varun, his jaw dropped at the moment he sees his bride “for the first time”.’
That jaw-dropping moment