Prutha Goa

Colin Braganza is a medical student at Goa Medical College who is soft-spoken and has a special connection with nature, as is revealed through his photographs. His interest in butterflies, which he used to shoot with a 2 zoom mobile phone camera (to help identify them), soon led to photographs of landscapes, birds and generally anything worth photographing. He uses a Nikon p530 camera now to capture any scene that piques his artistic sensibilities. Nature is at its most fragile with the world’s climate spiralling out of control, besides direct onslaughts in the name of progress. How soon will it be before all that is left is just photographs? Our own existence depends on how we react to the disturbing changes that are taking place. We still have the power to do what is best for the environment and reverse to a large extent the pathway to human extinction. “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thought

The month of January saw a flurry of postings on social media about the portrait photography of Alex Fernandes titled Festakars . The delicacy and other worldly beauty of these photographs, which captured the essence, the inner soul, of every one of the models who sat for him, is so very evident. This self-taught photographer of Goan origin wields the camera with great artistic expertise. ‘I am actually a product of the advertising and fashion industry,’ says Alex, who began his foray into the world of fashion and advertising as an assistant photographer in 1984 in Mumbai. From 1987 to 1990 Alex worked at his first job as a commercial photographer in the Middle East. The aftermath of the first Gulf War saw him join the Kodak distributor in Kuwait. He says, ‘During my tenure (1992-2001) I also conducted lighting workshops for the company. The workshops for Profoto film and Potra paper which were Kodak products used exclusively for portraiture were on behalf of Kodak (Near East) based in

Photographer David de Souza belongs to a small group of intellectuals who dare to live life against the diktats of society and practice their chosen profession with a pervasive joy and freedom, teaching others to follow suit and dare to dream differently. He advocates the liberty to traverse different fields of occupation as he moved from the sciences to the arts: a phenomenon more prevalent in these modern times in India than it was in the past. David left formal schooling of nineteen years equipped as a biochemist, and the rebel that he is, he chose to walk the road not chosen by most by working in an adivasi village in Nasik with the non-profit organisation Maharashtra Prabodhan Seva Mandal. It was here that the realisation dawned that his education held no weight in the balance to experience and reality. And so began the process of casting pretentious knowledge to the wayside. After reading Roman Catholic priest and Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich’s surmise the disconnection betwe

Himalayan Insights was India’s foremost photographer Raghu Rai’s contribution to Goa Photo 2015, an annual international photography festival. A collection of photographs selected from work done over the years; captured shots of the Dalai Lama and places such as Ladakh and Gangotri, made a startling impact on the viewer in their black and white avatar. Impressive in their depth, the photographs were lent an aura of poignancy by the lack of rainbow hues. ‘Images should have their own strength about them. They should be able to stand on their own. Some of them were in colour, but colour is pretty and predictable. Too many photographs appear as picture postcards with colour,’ says Mr Rai, explaining why the entire collection was in black and white. Photo taken from Gallery Gitanjali Facebook page . Raghu Rai qualified as a civil engineer but took up photography in 1965, going on to take up his first job as a photojournalist at The Statesman the very next year. He left his employment as c